


Sub Rosa (Behind Closed Doors)

by Jo (jmathieson)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Case Fic, Dom/sub, John Learns Something About Himself, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Not Quite So Accidental Voyeurism, One of Those BDSM Clubs that Only Exist in Fic, Secrets from Harold's Past, Service Submission, safecracking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9591785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmathieson/pseuds/Jo
Summary: A secret about Harold’s past, a surly Madam, a daring break-in, a spunky Number, and John learning some new things about himself.





	1. Chapter 1

Harold Finch sat at his computer desk, perfectly still, hands poised above the keyboard, ready for action at any moment. The side monitors flashed code, surveillance video, and social media profiles, but on the center monitor, taking up more space than it really needed, was a 3-D map of the city with a red dot that marked John Reese’s location.

Two more gunshots rang out and Harold flinched as if he was in the line of fire. Automatically, he pulled up the 911 switchboard to see if the disturbance was being reported. It wasn’t, yet. That was one small mercy, at least. Harold could hear scuffling and something that sounded like wood breaking. He couldn’t help himself any longer.

“Mr. Reese, are you all right?” No answer. He shouldn’t have asked. He didn’t want to distract John, and yet… Three more shots. Four. Five. A soft grunt that Finch recognized as the only sound John ever made when he was in pain. “Mr. Reese?” Still no reply. “Are you all right Mr. Reese?” Harold could hear his own voice rising, taking on a sharp edge. He hated that he didn’t have more control over himself, but… “John?”

Heavy breathing. “I’m okay, Harold. We need more data on this number. Graphic artists don’t usually have expertly trained bodyguards.”

“No, they don’t. I’ll see what I can find.” Harold’s heart rate slowed back to normal even as his fingers flew over the keys. He’d missed something. Something that had put John in danger. “You should come back here until we figure out what’s going on.” And so that Harold could see with his own eyes that John was whole and uninjured.

“Be there in ten minutes.” There was a click as John switched off his earpiece. Harold considered switching it back on remotely; the sound of John’s breathing as he made his way back to the library would reassure Harold and allow him to concentrate more fully on his task, but he didn’t. Out of a sense of fairness he tried to allow John as much privacy as possible.

He spent the ten minutes digging deeper into Chloe Marshall’s background. By the time the rattling of the elevator announced John’s presence, he had an inkling as to why Ms Marshall had bodyguards.

All thoughts of the number left his head, however, when he saw the red stain on John’s white shirt. His jacket was torn too, Harold catalogued automatically, and there was a scrape on his cheekbone. “You’re hurt,” Harold said, standing and taking a step towards John, who had stopped by the tattered old settee.

“It’s nothing, Harold, just a scratch.”

Harold knew that John wasn’t badly hurt; the strain in his voice and on his face were always obvious when he was lying, but it still disturbed him to see John injured—and not just because he found the sight of blood unpleasant. “Sit down. I’ll get the first-aid kit.” Harold managed to inject a little exasperation into his tone to cover both his concern and his relief.

“I can get it,” John said, but he didn’t move from where he was standing.

“Sit,” Harold ordered, giving John a hard stare. John’s posture changed minutely, his spine straightening and his chin lifting, his eyes finding Harold’s and then dropping to the floor as he acquiesced and folded himself onto the settee. The cold ball of concern in Harold’s stomach uncoiled, replaced by a tiny thrill at John’s obedience. Harold resolutely quashed the feeling as he fetched their large, well-stocked medical bag. To distract himself, he started to talk about the number. “It seems our Ms Marshall is the daughter of a prominent City Councillor.”

John had stripped off his tattered suit jacket and was easing his left arm out of his shirt. He gave a soft grunt of pain as he stretched his shoulder back. “That still doesn’t explain the bodyguards. We’re going to have trouble keeping an eye on her now. They’ll be watching. Sorry they spotted me.”

“Don’t be silly.” Harold was unpacking antiseptic and gauze and steri-strips and tape. “I’m the one who should be apologizing for sending you out with insufficient data.” ‘And for letting you get hurt,’ Harold thought, but didn’t say. Instead he reached out and put the fingers of one hand delicately on John’s skin just above the wound. It was a long but thankfully shallow gash that traced his ribs. Harold could feel John forcing himself to relax, to keep his breathing steady. “Am I hurting you?” Harold asked softly, even though he knew he wasn’t. He was fishing for more data, wanting to know what was making John react oddly to his touch.

“It’s fine, Harold, go ahead,” John said, and the faint tension that Harold had been sensing disappeared. It was still ‘Harold,’ though. John hadn’t switched back to ‘Finch’ yet. Harold catalogued that and tucked it away for further analysis, thinking even as he did that he shouldn’t. That this… obsession of his was as much an invasion of John’s privacy as listening to him unawares would be.

With agile fingers that built circuit boards and assembled micro components, Harold cleaned and bandaged John’s wound, pinching the edges of bisected skin together and fastening them in place with steri-strips before covering the gash with gauze and taping that firmly. Harold felt John shift minutely as soon as he had put the last piece of tape in place. “Are you hurt anywhere else, besides that?” Harold asked, gesturing at the angry red scrape on John’s cheekbone.

“No. It’s fine.” But John sat still, didn’t turn his head away or make any move to avoid Harold’s hand when he grasped John’s chin and turned it. Harold chided himself for taking the liberty, but he couldn’t help it. John had been shot at today, and while that was an unfortunately common occurrence, it set Harold’s heart racing and the fear climbing up his throat every time.

“It needs cleaning.” Finch said, letting as much command as he dared creep into his voice.

“All right.”

And it was most certainly Harold’s own state of mind that made him think he heard a faint tremor in John’s voice. Sorry that he couldn’t soak a bit of gauze in antiseptic one-handed, Harold released John’s chin. This business where they only touched each other when one of them was hurt played hell with Harold’s emotions. At least he was self-aware enough to realize that. He wondered briefly if John was as well.

‘He’s perfectly capable of bandaging himself up, he’s no doubt done it more times than he can count. He lets you do it because he wants you to, or because you want to. Or both. Almost certainly both,’ Harold thought as he steadied John’s chin with one hand again. And even though they both knew it was entirely unnecessary, John let him.

He also winced slightly as Harold dabbed his abraded cheek with the damp gauze.

“Sorry,” Harold murmured reflexively.

“It’s okay,” John said, and now his lips curled into the ghost of a smile and his voice held the rich sincere warmth that Harold loved so much. That he got to hear more and more often these days as their working relationship solidified into a close, intimate friendship. That was what happened after you’d saved each other’s lives a few times, Harold thought distractedly as he stared at the strong line of John’s jaw from inches away. There was a closeness that somehow transcended friendship. Harold assumed that it was nothing new to John, who had served in the military and thus probably had experienced this many times before. But for Harold it was a revelation. He had been willing to die for Nathan, and for the project, but only in an abstract sense. And he would have done anything to protect Grace, of course. But the calm certainty that had overtaken him, faced with John on a rooftop wearing a bomb vest; the security of knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was ready to die trying to save John’s life… That had changed him somehow.

And made the things he felt for John—the things he didn’t even like to admit to himself that he wanted from John—much harder to ignore. Harold finished cleaning John’s cheek and released his chin. He tidied the medical supplies away, cataloguing what would need to be replaced as he packed the bag.

“Thank you Harold,” John said softly, and Harold looked up into John’s blue eyes. His face was perfectly calm, but his eyes held a warmth that made Harold’s chest tight. ‘He lets me do this on purpose,’ Harold realized. ‘Because it’s something we can have.’

“You’re welcome, Mr. Reese,” Harold said. He let his lips curve into a small smile to soften the return to formality. He stood and made to pick up the first-aid bag, but John laid his hand on it.

“Leave it. I’ll put it away later,” John said mildly.

“Fine.” Harold went back to his computer chair and looked at the results of the searches he’d set to run before John had come in. “Well, this certainly complicates matters,” he said, reading the data.

“What does?” John asked from behind him. John normally leaned over his shoulder to look at the screens, but the gash on his side would obviously make bending uncomfortable for the next little while. Harold swiveled his chair part way round to answer, to find John standing with his feet apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He hadn’t put his ruined shirt back on, nor had he fetched a spare from the garment bag he kept at the library. He was standing in a (probably habitual and completely unconscious) ‘parade rest’ position, but one that radiated his attention to whatever Harold was about to say next. It was… very distracting, and Harold had to swallow and take a firm grip on himself before he could continue.

“There is a distinct possibility that the bodyguards weren’t actually bodyguards, per se, but rather guards. That is to say,” Harold cursed himself for speaking imprecisely. “It would seem that Ms Marshall is being watched by men in the employ of a mobster by the name of Frank Sepczynski for reasons that I have yet to discover.” Finch’s computer pinged and he turned back to look. “Oh my.”

His search algorithms had finally managed to connect Ms Marshall’s public online presence to a second, very private identity and the center screen was now displaying her FetLife profile. The screen to the left was running a search on everyone she’d ever interacted with on the website, looking for any connection to the mobster, or any other source of danger. The screen on the right was mapping her movements over the past few weeks based on her phone’s GPS.

John stepped forward and leaned in to see what had caught Finch’s attention. His proximity in combination with his state of undress was threatening to make Harold even more flustered, and he knew that if he let his discomfiture show, John would pounce on the opportunity to watch him squirm. So he took himself firmly in hand (so to speak) and said in his driest voice, “Well, it’s going to take the computer a while to sift through all this data and give us something new to work with, so why don’t we–“ Harold’s computer pinged again. John leaned in even closer.

“Looks like one of Ms Marshall’s ‘Friends’ on FetLife is Sepczynski’s son,” he said, reading off Finch’s monitors. “And they met up three weeks ago at…” There was a pulsing green dot where the GPS signals had overlapped.

Harold’s heart sank. He knew that address. He knew it all too well.

~~~~~~~~

_February 12, 2004_

The machine lit up with six danger signals, all at the same time, all at the same address. Harold had worked hard over the past few months to train himself to ignore the urge to call the police every time The Machine signaled a crime in progress. It was a necessary step while he taught The Machine to anticipate, rather than just recognize the danger of violence. A couple of times when the situation seemed particularly dire or involved children, Harold had made anonymous calls (with his voice electronically altered, from an untraceable number, of course) to the relevant authorities. He wondered if this might turn out to one of those instances as he told the machine to display the video it was analyzing. His eyes widened in shock for a moment, and then he laughed in relief as he realized what he was seeing. The machine had accessed the video feeds of what was obviously a BDSM club of some sort, and the, ah, patrons being buckled into gags and blindfolded and tied down to chairs and beds and what was that… oh, yes, a St. Andrew’s Cross (Harold Finch was exceedingly well read), in anticipation of being paddled or whipped, had obviously fulfilled The Machine’s criteria for potential violence.

Harold sat back and watched the screens dispassionately, his mind working furiously on the new problem. How was he going to teach The Machine to distinguish between consensual sexual play between adults and actual torture or rape? There was the setting, of course, it would be fairly easy to locate such clubs and keep an updated list of their addresses, but surely these types of clubs weren’t the only place people did… this sort of thing. In their offices after hours, in a dark alley with the possibility of getting caught... Harold realized immediately that people’s tastes could run far beyond his own active, but still fairly sedate imagination.

He spent a while considering the trappings, the whips and cuffs and costumes that were favored by most of the participants, but not all. One of the six video feeds, for instance, showed an older man wearing a standard business suit and a younger man in black jeans and a white t-shirt. As Harold watched, the one in the suit ordered the other to disrobe. Harold killed the audio on the other five feeds so that he could concentrate. Maybe there would be a clue to solving the problem in this interaction. The fact that the younger man, now naked and apparently named Jeremy (at least for tonight) was exceptionally fit and good looking perhaps made Harold’s interest more than just… computational.

On the screen ‘Jeremy’ stood naked, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back. The older man, who was still fully dressed, took a step towards him and then stopped, apparently looking his fill at the beautiful young man. “Very nice,” said the man, whom Harold began to think of as ‘Mr. Brown,’ based on the color of his suit.

“Thank you, sir,” Jeremy said, and Harold’s libido woke up and started to take an active interest in the proceedings. Harold watched as Mr. Brown made a slow, complete circle, examining Jeremy from every possible angle. Then he started a second circuit but stopped behind the young man. Harold waited, as Jeremy did, to see what Mr. Brown would do next. Jeremy’s arousal was becoming apparent as the tension grew, his cock filling and starting to rise. Mr. Brown, on the other hand, seemed to be perfectly calm and in control of himself. He laid his palm on the back of Jeremy’s left shoulder blade, and the young man jumped.

“Just me,” Mr. Brown said softly, and Jeremy looked downcast.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

“No need to apologize. I know you’re going to be good for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

‘Here we go,’ Harold thought, and waited for the pair on the screen to launch into a ‘naughty schoolboy’ scenario or something equally predictable and banal. But that didn’t happen. Mr. Brown stood there, his hand on Jeremy’s skin, while the young man’s breathing evened out. Jeremy was fully hard, now, his slim cock curving gracefully towards his stomach. His eyes were closed and his face had taken on a peaceful, serene expression.

“That’s it,” Mr. Brown said, “I’ve got you.” He slid his hand slowly to the back of Jeremy’s neck, fingers brushing his shoulder and thumb rubbing at his hairline. “I’ve got you,” Mr. Brown murmured again and pressed a light kiss to Jeremy’s other shoulder. This time the young man just sighed. Harold watched spellbound, his own arousal growing by the second.

“Good boy. Don’t move.” Mr. Brown stepped back and around so that he stood in front of Jeremy, facing him. His hands went to his fly, but instead of the tawdry encounter Harold had expected to witness, the moment now seemed tender. Once Mr. Brown had his own cock out, he stroked it slowly for a minute while looking at Jeremy with an affectionate smile.

“On your knees,” he ordered, his voice firm and commanding, but also warm and fond.

On the screen Jeremy folded himself gracefully to the floor and opened his mouth without being told. Harold’s cock was now hard and throbbing, and he knew he should stop watching, turn the feed off and go back to working on the actual problem, but instead he stared, rapt as Mr. Brown slid two fingers of his free hand onto Jeremy’s tongue and said, “Suck.”

Jeremy’s lips closed around the fingers and Harold could see his mouth working. Harold pressed the heel of his hand to his crotch. He didn’t have a spare pair of pants at the office and besides, Nathan could show up at any time.

“Open your eyes, love,” Mr. Brown said. “I want to see you.”

Jeremy’s eyes fluttered open, and the expression of adoration on his face made Harold so hard he hurt.

“So beautiful. Now open your mouth,” and when Jeremy complied he slipped his fingers out. “Not until I say.” Mr. Brown brought his cock teasingly close to Jeremy’s lips, touching the tip to them as if he was kissing the young man’s lips with his cock. “Wider.” Jeremy stretched his mouth open wide. “Now stay perfectly still for me.” Harold could see Jeremy keeping himself firmly under control as Mr. Brown slid his cock slowly in and out of his open mouth, a little further each time until it must have been bumping the back of his throat, judging by the way the young man’s eyes started to water. Jeremy still didn’t move, however, holding his mouth open wide and keeping perfectly still on his knees for this man who obviously cared for him.

“So good for me. So beautiful,” Mr. Brown was saying as he slid his hard cock in and out slowly, again and again. The only evidence of his arousal (besides his erection, of course) was a slight flush to the skin of his face and neck. He pushed his cock all the way into Jeremy’s mouth and held it there. Now Mr. Brown’s mouth was open and his breathing became louder. “Suck me now,” he ordered, and Jeremy closed his lips around the cock in his mouth and sucked.

Harold was breathing in short harsh pants himself. He’d watched pornography before of course, both straight and gay, since his own tastes weren’t confined to one gender, but most of it had left him completely cold. This, however… Jeremy kneeling, naked, hands behind his back. Holding himself perfectly still and following Mr. Brown’s instructions so precisely. Mr. Brown getting exactly what he wanted, but not at Jeremy’s expense, since it was obvious the young man was truly enjoying the encounter. And the tenderness, the care between them… Harold had never known that anything like it was possible.

On the screen Mr. Brown’s eyes snapped closed and he buried his cock deep in Jeremy’s throat. Jeremy’s jaw worked, and Mr. Brown moaned long and low. Despite the hand he had pressed hard to the root of his own cock through his pants, Harold almost came when he saw Jeremy swallowing.

“Good, so very, very good for me.” Mr. Brown murmured. Jeremy was still sucking enthusiastically, though more lightly and carefully now, releasing Mr. Brown’s cock bit-by-bit and licking it clean as he went. When it finally slipped out of his mouth entirely, shiny and pink and soft, Mr. Brown slid his hand into Jeremy’s hair and tilted his head up. “That was perfect. You were perfect. Perfect for me, my good boy.”

Jeremy blushed red at the praise, his eyes a little glazed, and his cock, still hard and curled up towards his stomach, leaked large clear drops. Mr. Brown carded his hand through Jeremy’s hair for a minute more, then took a step back and tucked himself back into his trousers. Harold stared, already indignant on Jeremy’s behalf. ‘Surely you won’t leave him hanging like that.’

“Stand up for me, love. Do you need a hand? Here.” Mr. Brown had one hand under Jeremy’s elbow, steadying him as he climbed to his feet. “That’s it. Good boy. Now hold yourself still for me.” Mr. Brown circled around behind Jeremy and gathered him close, pressing up against the young man’s back with one suit-clad arm across Jeremy’s chest, steadying him. “Good. Good boy. Now tell me what you want.”

“I…” Even over the low-quality audio Harold could hear the catch in Jeremy’s voice. “I want you to make me come, please sir.”

“Of course. Of course I will, love. Be still, now, and no more words.”

Harold watched the exquisite pleasure on Jeremy’s face as Mr. Brown slid his other hand slowly down over smooth, pale skin. Mr. Brown’s face held fond concentration as he carefully skirted Jeremy’s cock and instead caressed his inner thigh for a moment before starting to play with his balls. Jeremy moaned. His chest heaved, but apart from that he stood perfectly still as he’d been told, submitting to Mr. Brown’s slow touches. Finally his hand came up and curled lightly around Jeremy’s hard cock. Mr. Brown tucked his face in close to Jeremy’s, and whispered something in his ear too softly for the audio to pick up. Jeremy’s body started to tremble as Mr. Brown worked him in long slow strokes.

Watching the grainy video, Harold could sense Jeremy’s arousal, and his desperate need for release, but also his pleasure in submitting to Mr. Brown’s will. No matter how much he wanted to come, Jeremy didn’t move, didn’t speak. He let Mr. Brown stroke him in a slow, relentless rhythm guaranteed to ratchet up his arousal without being quite enough for release. But, watching Jeremy’s slack face, it was Mr. Brown that Harold identified with. Having that power; having a beautiful partner in his arms who was submitting so completely, so willingly; being in complete control of the encounter, were all things that Harold had never thought he could have himself, and it made him suddenly want them more desperately than he thought possible.

Mr. Brown’s slow stroking of Jeremy’s cock went on and on, until Jeremy started to moan. Small, broken noises at first, then more loudly with each long torturous pass of Mr. Brown’s hand. His head lolled back against Mr. Brown’s shoulder and his entire body trembled. Harold could imagine that Jeremy’s knees were barely holding him up, and that he desperately wanted to move his hips, to thrust his cock into Mr. Brown’s hand.

“I’ve got you, love,” Mr. Brown murmured just loudly enough for Harold’s straining ears to catch. “That’s it, I’ve got you.”

Jeremy moaned again, and then on a harsh desperate breath, gasped, “Please, sir. Please!”

Harold held his breath, his body tense, his cock still hard and aching. On the screen, Mr. Brown tightened his fist around Jeremy’s cock and stroked fast and hard. Jeremy cried out.

“Come for me, boy,” Mr. Brown ordered, and Jeremy did, his body tensing and jerking through a spectacular release. Harold moaned and pressed his hand into the base of his own cock so hard he was sure he was leaving a bruise. “Good, boy. That’s my good boy. You did so well for me, Jeremy. My good boy.” Mr. Brown was murmuring between gentle tender kisses that he pressed against Jeremy’s temple and to his damp hair.

Jeremy’s chest heaved, but he managed to get out, “Thank you, sir.”

Harold watched the two men wind down their encounter, which involved lots of gentle smiles, small touches, and reassurance. Mr. Brown wiped his own hands, and then tenderly cleaned Jeremy before ordering him to dress. They both looked so happy, so relaxed and content.

Harold couldn’t think straight. He killed the video on the screen one-handed, then hobbled over to the small bar fridge for a bottle of cold water which he pressed against his crotch. He was panting as if he’d run a mile, and his head was foggy with arousal and wonder at what he’d just seen, and his own response to it. He’d known about BDSM, of course, but had always assumed that it was a matter of whips and chains and leather. Nothing like this. This beautiful communion between two people, giving each other exactly what they each wanted. Exactly what they both needed.

His erection finally wilted, Harold packed up his workstation for the night. There was no way he was going to get any more work done on The Machine’s code in the state he was in. He went home, undressed, climbed into bed, and jerked off desperately to the memory of the images he’d seen, his mind flicking from Mr. Brown’s calm control to Jeremy’s ecstatic moans. Harold came harder than he had in years, gasping with the force of it and seeing stars.


	2. Chapter 2

“Where are you going?” John asked.

Harold managed not to start guiltily as he struggled into his coat. John watched him dispassionately.

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Just out, Mr. Reese. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“If it’s anything to do with our current number, I’m going with you.” John was using that perfectly calm tone that brooked no argument.

Harold opened his mouth to say that it had nothing to do with their current case, but found he couldn’t. He’d promised, at the beginning, never to lie to John, and he wasn’t about to break that promise now. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Reese. I’ll be perfectly fine by myself.”

“No, you won’t. Do I need to remind you about the gash on my side? Or about the three large men with guns?”

“I won’t be going anywhere near Ms Marshall, so I won’t be in any danger.” Harold headed for the door, but John stood unmoving in his path.

“You’re going to the address where Marshall and Sepczynski’s son met. I’m going with you. In fact, you don’t need to go at all. You stay here, and I’ll find out what they were up to.”

Harold sighed. He already knew exactly what Ms Marshall and the mobster’s son were doing at that address, and short of ordering him off the case entirely, which probably wouldn’t do any good, he knew John wouldn’t be dissuaded. Harold also knew he was going to lose this one, so he shrugged resignedly. “Fine, you can come. But let me do the talking.”

Their cab pulled up in front of a well-kept building. John got out and came around to open the door for Harold, something that Harold suddenly realized he’d been doing for quite a while. Harold had a sinking feeling that things were about to get very awkward, very quickly.

The building had a small brass plaque that read _The Bellona Club_ above an intercom box. Harold could see the pinhole camera set into the speaker grille, but only because he already knew it was there. He pushed the button.

“The Bellona Club, can I help you?” came a pleasant young woman’s voice.

“Harold Gull, with a guest,” Harold said, straightening his shoulders and holding his head high. He was going to face this with as much dignity as he could muster.

“Of course, Mr. Gull, welcome back,” said the voice, and Harold didn’t have to be looking at John to know his eyebrows were shooting up. An electronic click signaled the door unlocking, and John leaned past him to open it, then stood aside to let him through. Harold stepped into the familiar entryway. Not much had changed. The thick maroon pile carpet underfoot, the dark wood-paneled walls, the very carefully designed lighting that made the place look elegant while at the same time being plenty bright enough for the hidden cameras to get a good look at them. There was a closed door at the end of the hallway, eight feet in front of them, and another halfway down, on their right. They were standing so close together that Harold could feel John tense as that door opened, then relax partially, but not entirely, when a well-dressed woman came out to greet them.

“Mr. Gull, it is so nice to see you again! If you would just step into the office and sign your guest in. You’re in luck; we have two rooms currently available for drop-ins.” The woman took a step back towards the door, but Harold didn’t follow.

“Thank you Susan, but I was hoping to speak to Jasmine, if she’s available?”

“I’ll check, but you still need to sign in with your guest. You know the rules.”

Harold set his mouth in a hard line. Unless they’d substantially changed the decor of the office… Harold followed Susan with John on his heels. He concentrated on not blushing while he leaned on the counter to sign the leather-bound book that Susan slid towards him, filling in his name and membership number, and registering John as John Warren. Behind him, John was standing still and perfectly silent. Once he’d registered, Susan accepted the book back.

“If you’ll just give me a minute, I’ll see if Jasmine’s available,” she said brightly, and picked up her desk phone.

Harold straightened up and glanced around. It was as bad as he had feared. Worse, in fact. Lining the walls of the office were display cases containing a wide range of sex toys, most of them tending towards bondage and sadomasochistic play. There were gags and hoods, whips and floggers, cuffs and manacles. In the corner a mannequin wore a full body suit, and next to it were two display cases, one featuring an array of dildos and butt plugs, while the other contained clamps, clips, Wharton wheels, and enema equipment.

John had his hands clasped behind his back and was dispassionately looking at a shelf full of glass and metal butt plugs.

“Jasmine is just finishing up a business call, she’ll be with you in five minutes. In the meantime, if there’s anything you’d like to see…” Susan said, standing and crossing to the display case that held John’s attention.

“No thanks, just looking,” John said with his ‘being pleasant to civilians’ smile. Harold could feel the tips of his ears burning, and he despaired of getting through the next few minutes without turning completely red in the face. John turned his attention to the bodysuit, studying it with an interest that Harold hoped was professional. He fixed his eyes on the top of the counter, trying to ignore the fact that John was prowling around the room examining all the… equipment most carefully.

Harold and John turned at the same time when they heard the office door open. Harold was very relieved to see that Jasmine was wearing a business outfit and not dressed for ‘play.’ You never knew what you were going to get with Jasmine.

“Harold, it’s so lovely to see you again!” The tall, slim woman exclaimed, bearing down on him like a valkyrie. Harold could feel John stepping up to his back, just in case he needed protection from the establishment’s Madame. Jasmine bent down to kiss both of Harold’s cheeks. “And who is this gorgeous specimen?” she asked, her eyes sweeping over John appraisingly.

“Jasmine, I’d like you to meet John,” Harold said, falling back into the club’s ‘first names only’ habit without thought. “He’s a… colleague.” Harold could feel the tips of his ears burning again, this time from the sly smile that Jasmine was giving him.

“I see. Well, whatever it is you want to discuss, we’ll be much more comfortable in my office.” Jasmine turned and led them out of the reception area and down the hall. As they approached the door, there was another soft ‘click’ and Harold could hear John’s soft hum of appreciation for a well-designed security system. Too late, Harold remembered that the last time he had been in it, Jasmine’s office had been decorated in a style that befitted her establishment and her tastes.

Sure enough, she led them into a sumptuous office, complete with oak desk, leather chairs, a wet bar, a leather banquette, and, Harold averted his eyes quickly, a St. Andrew’s Cross propped up in the corner. The walls were also covered in artwork. Pictures of naked bodies, many of them male but also some female, looked down at them from every angle. Some were photographs, some original paintings. Two were obviously of Jasmine herself, both with a young, gorgeous naked male wearing a collar and cuffs.

“Please, sit down. Can I get either of you something to drink? Ice water perhaps?” Jasmine said, looking at Harold with a teasing smile.

“No, thank you, we’re fine,” Harold said, taking one of the chairs, and indicating to John with a look that he should also sit.

“Well,” Jasmine continued before Harold could start to speak, “I can certainly understand why we haven’t seen you here in the last couple of years. Harold, he’s exquisite.” Jasmine was staring openly and hungrily at John, not bothering to hide the fact that she was undressing him with her eyes.

“He’s not…. we’re not,” Harold cursed himself for stumbling and blushing. “We’re just colleagues. John is with the U.S. Marshal’s office. I’ve been working as a consultant for the department on computer crime cases, and when your establishment came up as a lead in an ongoing investigation, I offered to come along and, ah, make the introductions.”

“You mean you used your status as a member to get him through the door without a warrant,” Jasmine said, pointing at John with her chin. Her voice held cold hard steel, now, and Harold saw John straighten in his chair, back on full alert.

“Jasmine, please. A young woman’s life may be in danger. A woman who I believe is a member here, Ms Chloe Marshall?”

“Harold, you know full well that I’m not going to divulge the names of any of our members.”

“She met a man here, Chad Sepczynski. He’s the son of an extremely dangerous criminal, who we believe may be targeting her.”

“And what, precisely do you want from me?”

“Well, I was hoping that you might let us see the video of their, ah, encounter, in case there are any clues to–“

“Absolutely not.” Jasmine stood up. “Harold, you know how fond I am of you, and how grateful I am for the help you gave me, but what you’re asking violates every principle of discretion and privacy that this club must maintain in order to function.”

Harold stood, and John was at his shoulder in an instant. “Well, it was worth a shot,” Harold smiled at Jasmine. “We’ll just have to pursue our investigation through different avenues. Thank you for your time, Jasmine.”

“You’re welcome, dear. I am sorry I couldn’t help, and I truly hope no harm comes to the young woman.”

Harold wondered if Jasmine was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t fathom what it might be. He gestured for John to precede him out of the room, and as he did, Jasmine leaned in to whisper into Harold’s ear.

“He’s in love with you. Don’t let fear stop you.”

 

~~~~~~

_April, 2004_

Harold told himself that it was research. That he needed to learn more about this (surprisingly prevalent, once he’d started looking for it) aspect of society in order to program The Machine properly. He tapped into (or hacked) other, similar clubs. He read books. He visited Internet chat rooms. And at night, he replayed Mr. Brown’s encounter with Jeremy in his head while he jerked off. Gradually though, the script changed. As Harold learned more about what he liked, and what he wanted, an image of himself replaced Mr. Brown, and Jeremy became older, more mature. A tall, strong, intelligent man. Someone who was Harold’s intellectual equal and physical superior. That made his willing submission all the more sweet. It allowed Harold, who had only ever had his intellect to rely on, feel physically powerful for the first time in his life - it was, after all, a fantasy. And while he watched more extreme play (as research, of course), he found that his own tastes were simpler. He wanted absolute control, to know that everything that happened, happened on his terms. He wanted his partner (he wasn’t comfortable using the term ‘sub’ even in his head) naked, kneeling, and still. He wanted to be able to touch and tease at his leisure. He wanted to hear a slight hitch of breath turn into moans and whines.

He told himself that the only way to understand properly and fully was to visit the club. To learn more, so that he could be sure he was programming The Machine correctly. To this end, Harold created an entirely separate identity. He told himself that it was practice, a sort of test for himself: creating a set of records so complete that even The Machine couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real person. He gave Harold Gull a background and a job. Created an impeccable credit rating. Bought him a house, furniture and a wardrobe. Filed his taxes. And once all that was done, once everything was ready, he went to Harold Gull’s house. Just changing into the clothes he’d bought for Gull made Harold feel powerful. More self assured. Dominant, even though he still shied away from the word.

“Well, Mr. Gull, your application is in perfect order. Welcome to The Bellona Club. We’ll schedule an orientation session for you at your convenience,” said the woman who had introduced herself as ‘Jasmine.’

“My schedule is fairly flexible,” Harold said with what he hoped was an easy, engaging smile.

“I understand completely,” Jasmine said. “Many of our new members, once they’ve actually made the decision to join, want to get started as quickly as possible.”

“Am I that transparent?” Harold asked, hoping his newly confident manner (and his tailored three piece suit) was concealing his nerves.

“Not at all transparent, Harold, but I am very good at reading people. I have an orientation slot open–” she consulted a leather-bound diary. “Thursday afternoon. Would that suit you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Excellent, I’ll pencil you in. Do you have any other questions?”

“Just one: Is there some kind of, er, system for meeting other members whose, ah, preferences might be compatible with my own?”

“Of course. We don’t advertise it because this is absolutely not a dating service or a brothel, but once you’ve completed your orientation session, I’d be happy to arrange for you to meet some of our other members.” Jasmine’s smile turned somewhat feral and Harold didn’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified.

He didn’t have to go through with it, of course. After the orientation session, and even once Jasmine had performed introductions, he didn’t have to arrange to meet a man in one of the club’s rooms, order him to strip and kneel, touch him. Be touched by him. But he wanted to. Harold glanced up at the art on the walls of the office, seeing a surprising beauty in the bound and naked men and women portrayed by the art displayed there.

‘Maybe I can teach the machine to see beauty,’ Harold thought. ‘That way it would be able to tell the difference between violence and this.’

The orientation session was both excruciating and enlightening. Jasmine made him describe, in detail, what he wanted and why he wanted it. “If you can’t tell me about your desires, how are you going to negotiate with someone you’re actually interested in fucking?” had been her reasoning, which, while sound, didn’t make things any easier for Harold. But then they got to the part about proper care and attention during a scene.

“Something I’ve always been unsure about,” Harold said, “is how to know for sure that the ah, reaction I’m provoking is arousal and not distress. They can look quite similar…”

“That’s a very perceptive question, Harold, and simply by asking it, I’m very much reassured that you’ll be able to tell the difference when you’re looking for it. But to answer your question, there are many different ways to tell, depending on the circumstances. So long as your submissive isn’t blindfolded, then you look into their eyes. Poets don’t call the eyes the windows to the soul for nothing. When you look into your sub’s eyes, not only should it be easy to tell arousal from distress, but you should also be able to see their trust. A submissive in distress will be wild-eyed, you’ll be able to see stress or ‘bad’ pain. In fact, it’s a very good idea to order your submissive to open their eyes so that you can check. If their eyes are glazed over, or unfocused, you need to make sure that they’re not going into shock. Back off whatever you’re doing, and double-check the circulation in their hands and feet. Have them answer a couple of simple questions.” Jasmine had slipped into a lecturing mode, but Harold didn’t mind since it was useful information (to him; he wasn’t sure The Machine would ever be able to see into a man’s eyes and judge his trust).

“And if they are blindfolded?” Harold asked.

“Then there are other signs. Rigidity in the limbs that doesn’t relax. Not responding appropriately to questions or commands. Repetitive noises that aren’t a result of something you’re doing to them, that aren’t ‘in time’ so to speak. Of course the sub’s safe-word always trumps any other signs or signals, but subs can forget their safe-word, or not realize themselves that they are in distress, or dissociate. Your first and most important responsibility as a Dom is always to keep your submissive safe.”

Harold nodded, even though he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to do that.


	3. Chapter 3

Harold was looking at the blueprint tacked up on the board, partially obscuring the faces of Chloe Marshall, Frank Sepczynski, and Chad Sepczynski.

“Breaking in seems a little extreme. Why you can’t just hack the club’s computer to get the video, Finch?” John asked, coming up to stand at Harold’s back. Harold hadn’t said anything about breaking in, but of course, why else would he be looking at blueprints? He wasn’t planning to build the club an addition, after all.

“Because for security reasons, the video cameras are not connected to the club’s network, and the footage is stored off-line, in a Guardall media safe. Which is in the basement, protected by both motion detectors and an infra-red system.”

“Which you designed,” John said. He was guessing, of course, but John had always been exceptionally good at extrapolating from available data, which was one of the things Harold admired about him.

Harold sighed. “Yes. I designed The Bellona Club’s security system. Now are you going to just stand there or are you going to help me work out how to defeat it?”

“Here,” John said, his arm brushing Harold’s shoulder as he reached out to point at the old workman’s entrance door beneath the front steps.

“It’s a steel door with two deadbolts and the same electronic lock as the one on the front door. It won’t be any easier to get past.”

“No, but at least we won’t be visible from the street while we’re working on it. Can you bypass the electronic lock?”

“Of course.”

“Good, I’ll handle the deadbolts. Then all you need to do is work out how to defeat the security grid you designed.”

“What about the safe?”

“I’ll worry about the safe.”

“It’s going to be a long job,” Harold said, shaking his head.

John shrugged, “So, we’ll be sure to get a good night’s sleep first.”

“No, you don’t understand. The Bellona Club doesn’t keep regular business hours. The office is staffed twenty-four hours a day and members come and go as they please.”

“Great. And we’re not even sure the video is going to help us figure why The Machine gave us Marshall’s number.”

“No, but unless you have any other ideas, it’s the only lead we’ve got. They haven’t had any contact since their… encounter there three weeks ago.”

~~~~~~

“Okay, the alarm is re-routed and the electronic lock is disabled,” Harold whispered, trying to squeeze himself further into the corner between the stairs and the foundation wall to give John more room to work. They were both dressed head-to-toe in black and each carried a small rucksack of tools. John no doubt also had an impressive array of weaponry concealed on his person. On their way here, Harold had idly wondered if ‘going forth equipped’ was still an offense on the books in New York State. Then he grunted as one of John’s thighs pressed up against his groin.

“Sorry,” John whispered. He was taking off his gloves so that he could work the deadbolt locks, while trying to stay hidden in the shadows.

“It’s okay,” Harold whispered back. Having John’s warm, solid body pressed up against his was no hardship, even if it was only because of the close quarters. Harold was touch-deprived enough that even this contact was distracting, and he had to remind himself to stay focused on the task at hand. “Tell me if you need the light.”

“If I can’t do this by feel, we’re in trouble,” John whispered back. There was a ‘click’ that sounded loud to Harold’s ears. “That’s one.”

Harold’s face was inches away from John’s, which was turned towards the street to spot any arriving club members. So in the darkness, Harold allowed himself to spend one long moment drinking in the strong line of John’s jaw, the creases at the corners of his eyes that spoke of the things he’d seen, the calm, steady concentration on his face as he let his eyes slip closed to better feel the mechanism of the lock he was picking. John turned his head and tilted his ear towards the lock, bringing another sense to bear on the job. Just as he always did in moments like these, Harold longed to reach out and touch. To cup the strong jaw in his hand, to smooth the wrinkles with his fingertips. To turn John’s controlled calm into… something else.

The lock clicked and John’s eyes opened, looking straight into Harold’s. For a moment neither man moved, both seemingly pinned by the other’s gaze. Then John gave a slow blink. “Ready?” John’s voice was lower and rougher than his previous whispers had been.

Harold didn’t trust his voice at all, so he just nodded. John eased the door open a fraction of an inch and paused, making sure there was no alarm. Then he opened it just enough to slip through. Harold felt cold as John’s bulk moved away. He willed his bad leg to move, and followed. John had stopped, crouched, just inside the door, and Harold put a hand on his back to steady himself.

“Okay Harold?” John asked, and his voice was back to the mild tone that Harold was accustomed to.

“Fine. I’ll need some light to disable the sensors.” Harold tried to put all other things out of his mind as he pried the alarm panel open and started to trace the circuits, but John’s presence at his back, holding the penlight so that he could see, vied for his attention. Harold closed his eyes briefly and visualized the electronics he’d just been looking at, forcing the analytical part of his brain to work harder and take over.

“Are you okay, Finch?”

“Fine,” Harold said, ignoring the tiny stab of disappointment that it was currently ‘Finch’ and not ‘Harold.’ “Just thinking. Here, this should do it.” He reached in and unplugged two wires at the same time, then quickly pulled a third and twisted all three together. Both men held their breaths for a moment, but the basement remained silent. Above them, however, they could hear footsteps, the creak of a door, and the murmur of conversation.

“If we’re lucky, it’ll cover any noise we make,” John whispered, glancing upwards. Harold nodded, and started to move, but John put an arm across his chest to stop him. He took off the black watch-cap he was wearing and tossed it into the middle of the room. Still no alarms rang, and he nodded. “Just double-checking.”

Harold waited for John to move first this time, then followed him over to the safe. His task for the next little while was to keep look-out at the bottom of the stairs and hand John any tools or equipment he needed. It was going to be a long job, unfortunately, since this was a high-quality safe, and they had to work as silently as possible. John would be muffling the sound of the drill, but could only work for a few minutes at a time without the drill heating enough to potentially set off the fire alarms. Harold had refused to disconnect those as well, in case of a real emergency somewhere else in the building. He watched as John knelt by the safe’s mechanism and then unpacked the bag he’d been carrying, laying the tools out like a surgeon. Harold dragged his eyes away from John’s hands, and looked up the stairs, instead.

Intellectually, Harold knew that being here, his memories of this building and what he had done in the rooms above were the cause of his increased awareness of John, physically. He couldn’t deny to himself that he found John incredibly attractive; in fact, he had been concerned about that from the very beginning. The first time he saw John clean shaven, with his hair cut short and wearing a well-fitted suit, Harold’s mouth had gone dry. The photos of John, even the ones of him in uniform, hadn’t done the man justice. Hadn’t even begun to convey his presence and sense of controlled, contained power.

But their working relationship had been distant, at first. Harold kept all barriers to his personal life firmly in place, and John was reticent about the parts of his own background that weren’t on file. As attractive as John was, Harold found him cool, and that kept his libido in check. As they got to know one another better, however, as they worked the numbers, as they learned to trust and rely on each other, started to spend time together socially outside the Library… Then he had saved John’s life the first time, and John had rescued him from Root (not to mention somehow talking The Machine into helping him do it). By the time they were face-to-face on a rooftop, both their lives depending on Harold’s ability to hack a phone, Harold’s heart, as well as his libido, were firmly in John’s unknowing grip.

Harold heard the soft whine of the drill start up and glanced back at John. His arm and hand were draped with a piece of thick black fabric to help deaden the sound, and he was working by feel. John’s face was pointed towards Harold, no doubt also keeping watch on the door at the top of the stairs, but when their eyes met, he didn’t glance away. John simply held his gaze calmly and openly, as if to say he had nothing to hide.

A noise in the room above them broke the spell, and the whine of the drill stopped. Harold held his breath, listening for approaching footsteps, but what came instead a moment later was an unmistakable moan. It was a man’s voice, low and broken-sounding. John’s eyebrows went up, and Harold felt his face flush red. Luckily it was too dark for John so see that, or at least Harold hoped it was. John turned his attention back to the safe and started the drill again. Harold counted down two minutes in his head. He’d gotten to one minute and 47 seconds when the moaning started again, this time louder. John didn’t stop the drill until the two minutes were up, but when he did, they could hear the heavy breathing that accompanied the moaning as well as another noise, as if something in the room above their heads was rocking or banging.

Harold resigned himself to spending the next hour listening to two people have kinky sex while standing next to John, waiting for him to crack the safe. But having resigned himself to it didn’t make it any less embarrassing when the moans got louder and more desperate-sounding. John started drilling again, and Harold tried to concentrate on the new algorithm he was writing to trace social media connections more quickly. He managed to distract himself (while still keeping watch on the door) for the next two cycles of John drilling then pausing, but then just as the drill started up again, they both heard, “Please, sir,” from above.

The rocking noise got a little louder. There was a pause, then the desperate voice came again. “Please, sir. Please.”

Somehow knowing that it was two men in the room above them made it that much worse for Harold. It reminded him of the things he’d done here, things he’d been thinking about since The Bellona Club’s address came up in conjunction with their number. Things he hadn’t done in a very long time, but things he now couldn’t stop thinking about doing… with John… to John.

John start drilling again, but the low whine of the drill wasn’t nearly enough to block out the moans, panting, and begging.

“Please, sir, please.”

“Hush,” came the response; the second voice, while still being unmistakably masculine, was a little higher, smooth and gentle and comforting. Harold didn’t know why he turned to look at John just then, but he was just in time to see John’s eyes close and notice that he was taking what appeared to be a deep, fortifying breath.

“Sir.” It was a whine.

“What did I say?” a little sharper, and now Harold waited for the sound of a slap or the strike of a paddle or cane or whip. Which would be welcome, because that would snap him out of the erotic head-space the sounds had drawn him into. Harold was a Dominant, to be sure, but pain and humiliation had never been a turn-on for him. When he was in control, all he wanted from his submissive was obedience. Harold tortured with touches, and punished only with their denial. Bondage was interesting to him only in that it helped submissives who had inadequate control follow his orders to remain still. Harold preferred a man with better mastery of himself, a thought which made him sneak another look at John. Who now appeared to be concentrating on the drill and nothing else.

There were more sounds from the room, the scrape of a heavy piece of furniture, the creak of leather. Something hit the floor right over his head and Harold flinched. John’s attention was immediate, the change in his bearing so abrupt that it startled Harold even more than the noise had.

“I’m fine,” he mouthed to John, because if they could hear what was going on above them, they certainly couldn’t risk making any noise.

John nodded and went back to drilling. Harold tried to calculate how long the drill had been running and how much longer they needed, but the stops and starts defeated even his mathematical prowess. The rocking sound started up again, louder now, and accompanied by a softly moaned ‘ah, ah’ from the submissive in the room above them. The drill stopped. Harold risked a glance over at John, whose eyes were closed. He thought he could see a faint sheen of sweat on John’s forehead, but that could, of course, just be due to the heat of the drill and the fabric covering his arm and shoulder to muffle the sound. John started drilling again, and Harold turned to check the stairs.

“Please, Sir… Please. I can’t.” Broken, sobbing.

“Yes, you can.” Smooth. Rich and warm and comforting.

“I… please.”

“Please what?”

“Sir. I… please touch me.”

Silence.

A long, low moan of pleasure.

Harold bit the inside of his cheek hard, hoping the pain would serve to counteract his reaction to the images that the sounds from overhead were crafting in his imagination. His cock started to fill, feeling thick and heavy against his left thigh. The drill started up again and Harold almost flinched at the noise. He dragged his mind away from the room above and back to the basement he was standing in. He fixed his eyes on the side of John’s face and started to recite the digits of pi in his head.

The rocking sound started up again, louder and faster than before. The submissive was moaning almost continuously now, his gasps and sobs loud in Harold’s ears.

“Sir, please. I can’t. I need… I need… please.”

“Not yet.” And now the Dominant’s voice was lower and rougher. “Not,” rock, rock, rock. “Yet.”

Another long, low moan from the submissive. Then more sounds of movement. John stopped drilling. Harold fixed his eyes on the door at the top of the stairs and strained his ears.

“Kneel,” said the Dominant. There was a shuffle and a thump. Then the unmistakable clink of a belt-buckle. Harold closed his eyes and thought about standing under an ice-cold shower. It didn’t help. Something brushed his shoulder and Harold started, looking wildly at John, who was now pointing at the safe.

“I’m through,” John mouthed. Harold gave a sigh of relief. With the hole drilled, they could insert the fiber-optic camera and get on with figuring out the combination. Harold moved slowly, silently from his position at the bottom of the stairs while John folded the cloth and packed the drill back into his bag. By the time he was standing by the safe, John had the camera out and was handing it to him. Harold was just about to start feeding the thin flexible rod into the drilled hole when another loud moan came from above.

“Suck me,” the Dominant said in a low growl.

Harold resisted the temptation to bang his forehead against the cold metal of the safe only because it would have made noise. Instead he closed his eyes, drew in a long breath and let it out. Then, for some unfathomable reason, he risked a glance at John. John was standing with his back to the safe, between Harold and the stairs, shielding him from view. His head was tipped back against the metal, and, from this vantage point, Harold could see his Adam’s Apple bob as John swallowed. Harold swallowed a whimper and turned back to the safe, focusing on the hole and the equipment in his hands.

‘The faster I get this done, the sooner we can get out of here,’ Harold absolutely refused to let himself think about the symbolism as he fed the camera into the hole, and then switched it on. Getting the tip of the fiber-optic wand in place was no problem, but he needed one hand to hold it in position, and the other was occupied with the camera’s small display screen, leaving him short a hand to manipulate the safe’s tumblers. He leaned towards John, who caught his movement immediately, and leaned in as well. Harold put his lips as close to John’s ear as he dared.

“Hold this so I can see it,” he said handing over the screen. The wire between the camera probe and screen was short, forcing John to step closer. Harold concentrated on holding the camera in position, and, eyes on the screen, reached for the safe’s dial. Only to elbow John in the stomach. “Sorry,” he whispered, and adjusted the angle of his arm, but now he was in an awkward position that was going to start to hurt long before he got the safe open. John’s expression was verging on grim as Harold shifted, bringing his hand up under John’s armpit and snaking it between his chest and the safe.

Harold’s fingers touched the dial. From above them, there was a loud moan.

“Yes, good. Just like that,” growled the voice of the Dominant. Over the pounding of blood in his ears, Harold could just hear the soft wet sounds. Once this was over, once they had the damn tape, he was going to go home and jerk off until his cock was raw. Harold’s fingers trembled on the dial of the safe and he gripped it tightly. The clicks as he turned it sounded loud to his ears, but above him the submissive was moaning around his Dominant’s cock, who was making soft, encouraging noises. Harold fixed his eyes on the screen, and let his fingertips and ears find the correct settings.

The first tumbler fell, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Above them the submissive moaned again.

“That’s it. Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good.”

Harold felt John shift beside him. The screen wavered for a moment, then was still. Harold realized that he and John were plastered together from thigh to shoulder, his shoulder in John’s armpit, his arm crushed against John’s chest, their thighs pressed tightly together so that John could hold the screen where he could see it. Harold called on every reserve of self-control he had to block everything but the safe, the lock mechanism on the screen, and the dial under his fingertips, out of his mind. The second tumbler engaged, then the third. Just one more.

The wet noises from above got louder. The Dominant moaned. Harold’s fingers threatened to slip on the dial. He could feel John’s breath speed up, his chest heaving against Harold’s arm, and little puffs of air blowing past his right ear like a caress. Harold wanted to shake his head to clear it, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Above them the was a high-pitched whine, then a shuffling sound and a thump and another moan and panting and the sound of flesh slapping flesh. It took no imagination at all to figure out that the Dominant was now fucking his submissive on the floor just above their heads.

“Yes, so good. So good. Fuck.”

Harold closed his eyes. He couldn’t concentrate. He had to concentrate. He focused on the screen. He held the camera steady. He turned the dial. The last tumbler fell.

“Sir, please. Please.”

Harold released the dial and wiped a sweaty palm on his trousers. John didn’t move.

“Do you want to come on my cock?” the Dominant asked between panting breaths. The sound of flesh slapping flesh got louder, and faster.

“Yes, oh god, yes. Please, Sir.”

The Dominant gave a guttural moan. “Come on then, come for me.” Their rhythm sped up even more and Harold stared unseeing at the handle of the safe door. His cock was fully hard and throbbing against his leg, trapped. Behind him, John held his breath. Harold grasped the handle.

“Yes!” yelled the Dominant. There were a few more soft slapping sounds, then a moan.

“Sir, god. Sir!” the submissive wailed his own release.

Harold sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and turned the handle, easing the heavy door of the safe open just a crack. He breathed out in relief and felt John’s breath gust past his jaw. For a moment, neither of them moved, then John closed his hand over Harold’s.

The touch of John’s skin burned like fire and for one crazy moment Harold thought John was going to pin him and fuck him against the safe. But John’s fingers were gentle on his, easing the wand of the camera out of his hand. Of course, John was going to pack up the camera, and the rest of their gear, while Harold found the right tape. John stepped back and crouched by his bag. Harold swung the door of the safe fully open to reveal four shelves, three of tapes and one of bundled banknotes. His eyebrows rose. He knew, intellectually of course, that the club must make a considerable amount of money, but it still surprised him to see so much cash here. Perhaps if Jasmine ever forgave his transgression, he’d offer to set up a shell corporation for her, so that she didn’t have to hide cash in the club’s safe. As he was thinking about this, his eyes scanned the rows of tapes. There were six for the date in question, one for each of the rooms in the club. Not having any idea which room Ms Marshall and Chad Sepczynski had used, he had to take them all. Which meant the theft would certainly be discovered soon, when someone added today’s tapes to the safe.

Harold eased the safe door closed. There was no point in trying to conceal the drill hole, so he picked up his bag and stuffed the tapes in. Above them, there were soft murmurs and the sounds of kissing.

“You were so good for me. You’re amazing,” the Dominant said, seemingly in answer to a question.

“Thank you, Sir.” Harold could hear the slight slur in the submissive’s speech, which sparked more memories of his own. He shoved them down as he followed John back across the basement to the door they’d come in through, John snagging his watch cap on the way. It was the work of a few moments to re-set the alarms—Harold wasn’t about to leave the club unprotected as a result of his actions—and then they were back outside, the cool night air a blissful relief. Harold was about to move towards the sidewalk when John stopped him with an arm across his chest. Again, Harold had a flash of John turning and kissing him, but again it was simply a caution. John had heard the steps of a passerby on the other side of the road, and they waited until he was gone before they snuck out of hiding, then walked as quickly as Harold was able to the car they’d parked around the corner.

John headed for the driver’s side, but Harold shook his head. “I’ll drop your at your apartment, Mr. Reese, and then head home for some much-needed sleep. We can rendezvous at the library tomorrow morning and go over the tapes then.”

“Whatever you say, Finch,” John said, and those were the last words he spoke for the next ten minutes. The silence between them should have been awkward and strained, considering, but somehow it wasn’t. Harold managed to concentrate on his driving enough to ignore his erection until it wilted, and John stared out the passenger window. Traffic was blessedly light at four a.m., and soon Harold was pulling up in front of John’s building.

“There you are,” Harold said, and then faltered. He felt as if there should be something else to say, after the night they’d had, but of course there wasn’t. John climbed out, then walked around to the driver’s side and leaned down. Harold hit the button to lower the window.

“Pleasant dreams, Harold,” John said, with the ghost of a smile. Harold couldn’t tell if he was being teased or flirted with or both... or neither.

“To you as well,” he managed to answer, then rolled the window back up and put the car in gear. A glance in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away, however, showed John still standing on the sidewalk, watching him go. 

~~~~~~

Harold had gone through the routine of stowing the car in the underground garage, taking the elevator up to his apartment (one of many), letting himself in, and locking up behind himself. He checked the security system and found everything in order. He dropped the bag with his burglary tools and the tapes from the club on the sofa. Then he raided his stash of pain medication. Washing the pills down with a mouthful of water, he decided that he deserved some additional fortification in the shape of a large-ish measure of brandy. Taking the glass with him to the bedroom, he briefly considered a shower. The basement of the club and been dusty but not grimy, however, so decided against it. He’d shower in the morning. He stripped down to his boxers and opened the top drawer in the bureau, looking for clean underwear. It was only then that he realized where he was.

Harold had several apartments within a dozen blocks of the library, some of which he used regularly and some more infrequently, based on which cover identity owned them. This was one of his oldest and most irregularly-used ones, but the one he’d headed for tonight without conscious thought. The one with Harold Gull’s name on the lease.

The one he’d bought before The Machine was complete. The one he’d never told Nathan about. The one he always came back to after he’d spent an evening at The Bellona Club. Harold closed the drawer. There was no point in lying to himself or pretending. He slid his boxers down off his hips and left them on the floor. He climbed naked into bed, between the crisp silk sheets. He took another large, long swallow of his brandy and felt soothed as the liquid traced a line of fire down his throat and into his belly. He closed his eyes, and let his thoughts wander back to the club. His cock swelled and thickened, but he didn’t reach down to touch it, yet. He sat up, leaning against the headboard, a pillow at his back, and took another sip of his drink, then put the glass down.

 

~~~~~~~~

_December, 2005_

Harold was in his favorite room at the club: the one that was decorated like a drawing room. It had no bed, but instead a large leather-upholstered wing chair with matching ottoman, and a desk with a heavy wooden chair. There was a built-in bookcase full of leather-bound classics. There was a polished hardwood floor and a couple of small, strategically-placed rugs. Rugs for kneeling on. Harold was impeccably dressed in a tweed three-piece suit, his glasses firmly in place, his tie knotted in a double Windsor. He stood sturdy and firm, but it wasn’t his stature that held the man in front of him on his knees, it was his voice, and his manner. The aura of complete control that he had cultivated over the months that he had been coming here. Not often, as his work on The Machine was relentless. But once a month or so, for the past six, he made a call from a burner phone and reserved this room, along with the request that Jasmine find him a suitable partner.

This time, however, he had made the arrangements with the man kneeling at his feet himself. They had ‘played’ together once before, and the… chemistry between them had been good. Excellent, in fact. So when his subsequent arranged encounter had proved disappointing, he’d asked Jasmine to make inquiries as to whether ‘Stephen’ would welcome further contact from him. It had been nerve wracking, to say the least, to call him and arrange this encounter, but the promise of the fulfillment they both would enjoy prompted Harold take his courage in both hands. Luckily, Stephen had been pleased to hear from him. ‘I was hoping you might get in touch with me,’ he said on the phone, then his voice dropped to just above a whisper, ‘Sir.’

Harold spent a long time simply running his hands through Stephen’s dark hair, grounding and settling himself. Throwing off the stress and worries of his day, his week, his month. Quieting the part of his mind that spent most of his waking hours calculating algorithms and writing code. Letting the other part of himself, the part that he had only recently discovered, come to the fore. The part that was strong, decisive, in control. In command.

“Don’t move,” he ordered, and backed away from Stephen. It had been a long week and he was tired. He wanted some relief, wanted to relax and feel good. Wanted to be serviced by this gorgeous man who was here for him, who would follow his every instruction perfectly. Harold sat in the armchair and unfastened his belt, undid his trousers and took himself out of his silk shorts. He was only half hard, between the anticipation and the feel of his own hand. But it wasn’t his own hand he wanted.

“Stand up and come here.” Harold waited until Stephen was a foot away from the chair then stopped him with a nod. “Hands behind your back.” Stephen straightened his spine and settled his weight, feet apart, shoulders back, looking straight ahead. Exactly what Harold wanted. Stephen was fully hard, his short, thick cock curving up and to the left, which Harold thought was charming. Harold sat back and looked. Touching himself lightly, just a tease, while he let his eyes roam over Stephen’s face, his broad shoulders, the thatch of hair on his chest that framed two large, dusky nipples. The toned stomach and slim hips, the thick, muscular thighs. Harold felt the last of his stress slip away, replaced by a low hum of arousal.

“Kneel. Suck me. Gently,” Harold said, moving his hand to the arm of the chair. The first touch of Stephen’s lips to his sensitive cock sent a shiver through him, and then he relaxed completely. Let himself sit back and enjoy. Let himself drink in the feeling of power and control as he watched Stephen’s lips stretch around his cock, working it gently as instructed. Harold wanted to draw things out tonight. He wanted to push himself, and Stephen. Find out what he was capable of, and what heights they could reach together in the scenario he had planned. One of the attractions of this… lifestyle for Harold, once he started researching it, was the clear discussion of, and agreement to, the parameters of an encounter prior to its taking place. Rather than fumbling around hoping to hit on something your partner liked, the negotiation of a scene, the lists of no-go areas, even the lists of various… proclivities, Harold found them all eminently logical and useful.

The plan in his head was tame, compared to what happened in most of the rooms at this club, Harold knew, but pain and humiliation held no attraction for him. Obedience, on the other hand… Harold reached out and slid his hand into Stephen’s hair, and got a soft, muffled moan. He loved that sound, it aroused and excited him. He let his hand trail down the side of Stephen’s face, and spent a moment tracing the lips stretched around his cock. That made Stephen moan again, and bob down further on his cock, taking him all the way to the root. It was an impressive display, and one Harold was most grateful for. He continue to trace Stephen’s lips lightly, feeling the tension start to build in his body.

Harold smiled softly. There it was, the reason he did this. The thing he loved. The power he had—the power he was granted, willingly, by his partners—to touch and tease, to make them shiver and moan, to take them to the edge and keep them there for as long as he wanted, not granting them release until he ordered it… That gave him a heady feeling he’d never experienced before his first session at the club, and it was what kept him coming back, month after month.

Harold trailed his fingers down Stephen’s jaw to his throat, spending long minutes resting them where he could feel the bulge of his own cock. It was intensely erotic, and Harold had to work hard at his self control for a moment as he watched tears form in the corners of Stephen’s eyes. It was an awesome, beautiful sight, and Harold suddenly understood the appeal of paddling or whipping one’s partner. He still didn’t think he could bring himself to ever inflict pain, but seeing this was a wonderful gift.

His fingers left Stephen’s throat and slid down his chest to a large, plump nipple nestled in dark wiry hair. The first brush of his fingertips made Stephen moan around him and try to push forward to take even more. He choked and swallowed and the tears in his eyes spilled over, streaming down his cheeks as he moaned and bobbed faster. Harold took his hands off Stephen and laid them on his own knees.

“Slow down. Gently, I said.” Harold gave his voice a sharp edge.

Stephen went still, then pulled back slowly, gentling his tongue and going back to sucking lightly and moaning softly. After a minute, Harold slid one hand back into Stephen’s hair drawing a shudder and a louder moan. Harold could see the tension in Stephen’s shoulders as he fought to keep his hands behind his back. A glance down confirmed that he was hard and leaking, his thighs starting to tremble. Harold reached out with his other hand and again caressed the young man’s face and neck before letting his fingers trail down his chest to tease the other nipple this time, every so lightly. Stephen’s moans got more desperate, but to his credit his mouth stayed gentle on Harold’s cock this time, his motions slow.

“Very good,” Harold said, but didn’t let up, teasing Stephen’s nipples mercilessly, now pinching slightly, now touching feather light, using the pads of his fingers and gentle scrapes of his well-groomed fingernails. His own arousal faded from his immediate awareness. It was there, a very pleasant hum in the background, heightening his awareness as he watched Stephen’s responses, but he ignored it in favor of his appreciation of Stephen. Time for something else. Harold moved his hands back to his knees and ordered firmly, “Stop.”

Stephen stilled, still moaning quietly, and let his jaw relax, but didn’t withdraw.

“Good. Now back off, slowly.” Harold nodded his approval as Stephen sucked lightly and swallowed as he backed off, making sure not to drip on Harold’s trousers. “Go stand in the middle of the room.” Harold ordered, and watched as Stephen got unsteadily to his feet and complied. “Turn. Face away from me.” That was more for effect than anything, but the effect worked. Stephen shivered and tensed a little as he turned. Harold stood and tucked himself carefully back into his trousers. It would be a while yet, and he was more comfortable this way. He got up and stood behind Stephen. For a moment he didn’t move, letting the tension build, and Stephen jumped very satisfyingly when he laid a hand on the small of his back.

“Spread your legs and bend over and touch the floor.” Once Stephen had adopted the position, Harold stepped back to appraise it. “Legs further apart, palms flat on the ground.” He didn’t know how flexible Stephen was, how much of a strain the position would be for him, but it didn’t matter. Harold would work with whatever Stephen was (or wasn’t) capable of.

“Good,” Harold said, and reached between Stephen’s legs to cup his balls.

Stephen tensed.

“Relax, dear,” Harold said, the endearment rolling unexpectedly off his tongue. But in this moment, Stephen was very dear to him indeed. Harold fondled him, remembering from their previous session together what he liked, and what drew the strongest reactions. Within a couple of minutes, Stephen started to shake. Whether from the strain of the position or the arousal, Harold couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. “Use your hands to spread your cheeks for me.”

Stephen moved slowly, fighting to keep his balance once his hands were off the floor. He grasped his own ass and spread his cheeks wide. Still playing with Stephen’s sac and scratching lightly at the skin of his scrotum, Harold laid the thumb of his other hand on Stephen’s exposed pucker and pressed lightly. It had the reaction he’d been hoping for: Stephen whined and his legs almost buckled. He fought to keep his balance. His hands clenched spasmodically on his own buttocks.

Then he started to beg. “Please. Please, sir. Harold. Sir, please.”

Harold squeezed his balls lightly, drawing another loud moan, and pressed his thumb more firmly against Stephen’s hole, which spasmed then opened, letting the tip sink in.

Stephen was trembling, now, and still begging. “Sir, I need. Please.”

“Be still. Hold yourself open.” Harold knew the order was unfair, but it would only be for a moment. He drew his thumb out of Stephen’s ass and released his balls as well. Stephen made a sound that Harold thought might be a sob. “Patience, my dear,” Harold said soothingly as he took a small bottle of lubricant out of his pocket, opened it silently, squeezed a generous amount onto the fingers of his right hand, and stowed the bottle away. Holding his index and middle finger together, he touched the tips to Stephen’s pucker. “Open for me,” he said, pressing in slowly but firmly.

Stephen moaned again, long and loud, his legs shaking as Harold breached him. Once his fingers were fully sheathed, Harold said, “You may put your hands back on the floor now.”

Stephen did, rocking forward a little and almost stumbling as he finally took some of the strain off his hamstrings. Once he was steady again, Harold moved his free hand back to Stephen’s balls and rolled them in his palm. Then he started to work Stephen’s ass with firm slow strokes. Stephen wasn’t tight, he accepted the intrusion easily, so Harold added a third finger.

“God, yes,” Stephen gasped as Harold stretched him.

“Quiet now. No more words.” Harold squeezed Stephen’s sac firmly, drawing an indignant squawk. Harold continued to probe until he found Stephen’s prostate and stroked it.

Stephen moaned and started to shake again. Harold went to work. This was when the analytical part of his brain kicked back in, trying to work out exactly how long he could continue to tease his partner without bringing them to the point of no return. He stroked Stephen slowly, even gently, but relentlessly. And fondled his balls while he did it. It took only three minutes (by Harold’s internal clock) for the moans and whines to turn into syllables and snatches of words. ’Sir,’ and ‘Please,’ and ’Need,’ and ‘Can’t.’

Finally, a whole sentence spilled out: “Please, sir. I need it. I can’t. I can’t.” Stephen was sobbing now, his hands still on the floor, his whole body shaking.

“What do you need, Stephen?” Harold had discovered that he had just enough ego to want to hear his partner say the words.

“Your cock, sir. I need you to fuck me. Please.”

If Harold had only known that one day he would have an attractive, reasonably intelligent man gasping and sobbing and begging for his cock, his fourteen-year-old self would have spent a lot less time worrying and been much better able to concentrate on learning differential calculus.

Harold didn’t reply. Instead he kept up the slow thrusts of his fingers for a minute more, putting just a little more pressure on Stephen’s prostate.

“Sir, please.”

Harold took his clean hand off Stephen’s balls and put it on his shoulder. “Stand up for me. Slowly. Move your hands to your thighs for support first, then straighten up. That’s it.” Harold waited until Stephen was upright, keeping a hand on his shoulder. “Take a deep breath for me. In and out. And another one. Good.” Once Stephen’s trembling had stopped, Harold eased his fingers out of his ass. Stephen whined at the loss.

“Shh. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” Harold said softly. He slid his hand around to Stephen’s chest and brushed his thumb across a nipple. Stephen jerked and moaned as if he’d been electrocuted. “Easy. I’ve got you, dear. Breath for me.” Harold pressed his chest up against Stephen’s back, and continued to tweak the nipple under his thumb. Stephen drew in great wracking breaths and let them out with loud moans, and the occasional “Please.”

“All right. Go put your hands on the desk.” Harold dropped his hand and stepped back, then watched carefully as Stephen lurched the three steps forward before grasping the edge of the desk. Harold followed.

“Feet just a little further back. That’s it.” He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to clean his right hand, all the while keeping up a soothing stream of words. “You’ve been very good for me, Stephen. Very good indeed.” He stowed the handkerchief and fished out a condom, then undid his pants and let them drop.

“Thank you, sir,” Stephen said, his voice hiccuping.

“Shh. No more words now. And hold yourself still.” Harold had rolled on the condom and added a little more lubricant, though it probably wasn’t necessary as he had prepared Stephen quite thoroughly. Harold positioned himself at Stephen’s entrance, getting a loud moan as the head of his cock nudged his slick hole. He put both hands on Stephen’s hips and buried himself in one slow, smooth thrust. Then Harold stopped to assess.

“Spread your legs just a little more, please, dear. Feet just a couple of inches further apart. That’s it. Good.” Now it was perfect. Harold understood that much of a scene was about giving a submissive what they wanted, what they needed, and he took great pleasure in that, in being good at reading responses and adjusting and intuiting and making it as good as he possible could for the man who was giving himself up like this. But part of it was also for him, and now, now that Stephen wanted nothing more than to be thoroughly fucked, now Harold could take what he wanted.

He set a slow pace at first, which had Stephen moaning and swearing. But Harold wanted to enjoy this. Savor it. Like a good meal or a fine wine, the pleasures of the flesh needed proper attention and appreciation. So Harold closed his eyes and fucked Stephen slowly, letting his hips piston back and forth in a deeply satisfying rhythm. He could come like this, keeping the rhythm perfectly constant, his strokes slow, letting his arousal build incrementally until it reached the tipping point and pushed him over the brink, but he knew that wouldn’t do for Stephen. So he let himself enjoy the slow deliberate fucking for several more minutes, while Stephen’s moans grew more desperate and again turned into sobs. Waited until Stephen’s desperation again broke through and he started to beg.

“Please sir, I need it. I can’t… I need it, sir, please.”

“What do you need, Stephen?” Harold asked, purposely keeping his voice as dispassionate as possible.

“I need to come, sir. Please.”

At the end of their previous session, Harold had fucked him in this same slow rhythm to the point of his own orgasm, then used his hand to make Stephen come. But this time… he was almost certain he’d pushed Stephen far enough for what he wanted. He sped up his strokes a little, and put a little more thrust and a little more power behind them. His hands tightened on Stephen’s hips. He found it surprisingly satisfying to use what strength he had this way, taking.

Stephen moaned, his head hung down between his arms and his fingers clenched the edge of the desk, knuckles white. Harold fucked him harder. Faster. “You may come on my cock, Stephen,” he said timing his words between thrusts and breaths, and once they were out he fucked as hard as he could, pistoning his hips and chasing his own release at the same time as he tried to pound Stephen’s orgasm out of him.

“Oh fuck, sir. God. Fuck. Yes.”

Harold felt Stephen spasming around him, milking his spurting cock. It was the most intensely satisfying orgasm of his life.

Later, when he had cleaned them both up a little, refastened his pants, wrapped Stephen in a blanket and given him a drink. When he was sitting, slouched down a little, in the big, comfortable leather wing chair, with his knees spread so that Stephen could sit between them, his cheek resting on Harold’s thigh, eyes closed, relaxed, content. When he was carding his hand through Stephen’s hair, calling him ‘my dear’ and murmuring words of praise. In that all-too-rare clear space before his mind drifted back to the chunk of The Machine’s code he was wrestling with, Harold wondered if Stephen might be interested in a relationship outside the boundaries of the club. They seemed well-enough matched. Eventually The Machine would be finished, and Harold would have more time. It would be nice to have someone to spend some of that time with. Someone to eat dinner with, to go to museums and movies with. To share a bed with.

Harold knew well, however, that his current state of mind was not a good one to be making decisions in. He would leave it a couple of weeks, he decided, and then he would call Stephen and ask him out on a proper date.

Ten days later Harold met Grace, and didn’t go back to The Bellona Club for five years.


	4. Chapter 4

When he walked into the library the following morning, the stolen tapes in his briefcase, Harold wasn’t entirely surprised to find John already there, ensconced in the reading chair he favored. There was a cup of coffee and a danish at his elbow. Harold glanced over to his own workstation, and sure enough, there was a steaming cup of tea and a pastry box sitting on the corner of the table. When he got close enough to see the title on the spine of the book John was reading (he always checked, out of curiosity), his footsteps faltered.

John was reading _Ties That Bind_ , (a reasonably good book on BDSM relationships) and in a stack on the table next to him were _Ask the Man Who Owns Him_ , _Partners in Power_ , and—Howard swallowed convulsively— _Real Service_. John must have gone to one of the more reputable… erotica shops and perused their book section, possibly even asking for expert advice. Harold was completely unprepared for the tiny stab of jealousy that thought provoked. He unglued himself from the spot where he’d stopped and continued across the room to his workstation.

John, who had no doubt noticed his pause, looked up briefly and said, “Good morning, Harold. Did you sleep well?” then appeared to go back to his reading.

“Fine, thank you,” Harold said, sitting himself down and spending a couple of moments watching the data logs scroll past to calm his mind while he decided what to say. “Mr. Reese, if you think that you’re going to learn anything about me by reading those books, I have to tell you that you’ve wasted your money.”

“I was hoping for some insight on our current number,” John said, looking up at Harold with a completely neutral expression. “But I’ve also been learning a lot about myself.”

Harold willed his face to stay still. “I see.” Then he covered his warring emotions with movement, namely digging the tapes out of his briefcase and stacking them neatly on the desk next to his keyboard. “I’ll let you know when I find something,” he said, belatedly realizing that he was going to have to sit here and watch hours of Bellona Club members sceneing (on fast forward of course, but still) while John was sitting across the room, reading up on Dom/sub relationships and, apparently, learning about himself.

Harold gave himself sixty seconds to deal with that and then put it away. John was a powerful man who was always in complete control of himself, of course learning about the connection between that part of his psyche and his sexuality would be revelatory to him. Harold had always known that his fleeting wishes with regards to John were hopeless. Having this confirmation would make it that much easier for him to finally put his feelings to rest for good. He just hoped that John didn’t start asking him for advice about the… lifestyle. John would no doubt assume that Harold was submissive, which would make any questions he asked that much more excruciating.

Harold gave himself a mental shake. Just because they were spending more time together socially these days (at least once a month, John invited him over for a home-cooked meal, and about as often, Harold found some film or exhibit that the thought John would appreciate which they attended together). And just because what had started out as a cautious detente between two professionals had developed, over the past couple of years, into a warm, if still somewhat distant (and Harold knew that was almost entirely on him) friendship, that didn’t meant that John was suddenly going to start discussing his sex life, particularly if it was a newfound interest in BDSM.

Harold slotted the first tape into the player, attached the wires to the video input of his computer, and launched the appropriate software. If Jasmine hadn’t changed the way the rooms were numbered and themed, this should be the… tamest of the tapes. He’d work his way up, hoping to find Ms Marshall and Chad Sepczynski’s scene in the earlier tapes.

Room 1 was simply a bedroom, tastefully decorated and almost indistinguishable from any high-end hotel room, with the exception of the supplies provided in the bathroom and the contents of the dresser drawers. It was suitable for a wide variety of role-play scenarios. As soon as the door opened and two club members entered, Harold hit the pause button and checked their faces. Certainly not Ms Marshall and Chad Sepczynski. He fast-forwarded through their encounter, which, from what he could tell at high speed, was a simple boss-seducing-secretary role play. The next couple featured an older woman who tied up her partner with his own tie and tickled him with feathers until he came. The third was two men and a woman, the woman apparently directing the men to suck and fuck each other, watching but not participating.

The tape continued, with one of the club’s employees coming in between each set of guests to change the linens, check the supplies, and occasionally add a few specialized items, as in the case on the screen now: several large, brightly colored blankets. Harold’s eyebrows went up in surprise when Jasmine entered the room with the next club member, a well-dressed, middle-aged man. As far as he knew, Jasmine never played with any of the club members. Maybe this was an orientation session? But then why the blankets? Harold realized he must have made a surprised sound when he heard John close his book and put it down.

“Did you find something?”

“No, or rather, I don’t think so. It’s, ah, Jasmine, not Ms Marshall or Chad Sepczynski.”

“Oh?” John was behind him, leaning over his shoulder and looking at the screen. Jasmine touched the man briefly on the shoulder and he smiled a small, grateful smile, and then nodded. Harold considered turning the sound up (he’d muted it at the beginning for obvious reasons) but he had no reason to believe that this scene, while unusual, was in any way germane to their case, so he didn’t. On screen, the man was undressing, but only down to his undershirt and boxer shorts, and Jasmine was hanging his clothes up. At a nod from her, the man climbed into bed. Jasmine came over and draped three of the colorful blankets around him, pulling each one up to his chin and tucking it in around his shoulders. Once she was satisfied, she laid a gentle hand on his cheek and then leaned in to kiss his forehead. She turned the lights out as she left the room. Harold hit the fast-forward button, and according to the tape’s counter, the man slept for four hours.

“Is that kind of thing sexual for some people?” John asked, sounding sincerely curious.

“People have all kinds of needs, sexual and otherwise, that they have difficulty fulfilling in the course of their… normal, for lack of a better word, lives, Mr. Reese. One of the main things The Bellona Club offers is a complete lack of judgement.”

“Of course,” John said. He stood at Harold’s shoulder until the next club members, a pair of women, came in, and then went back to his reading. The rest of the morning crawled by slowly; it took Harold nearly two hours to review the 24 hours of tape for the first room. If he didn’t hit on Ms Marshall and Chad Sepczynski’s scene soon, it was going to be a very long day indeed.

The next room was the ‘Soaker Room’, designed for wet/messy/dirty play. From whipped cream to mud wrestling, and, Harold’s mouth turned down as he remembered initial tour of the club with Jasmine, watersports and scat play. As he slotted the tape in, he fervently hoped that wasn’t Ms Marshall’s kink. He wasn’t being judgmental, he just had his own preferences that were… cleaner.

The Soaker Room got less traffic than Room 1, appealing as it did to more of a niche crowd, and also requiring more cleaning between sessions. Harold was was able to get through the tape in only 45 minutes, and thankfully only had to watch (on fast forward) a single golden shower. His hand shook slightly as he slotted in the next tape, the one for Room 3. His old favorite room. He glanced over at John, who had apparently finished reading _Ties that Bind_ and had started on _Real Service_. As Harold watched, John uncrossed and recrossed his legs, and Harold couldn’t help but wonder if it was for personal adjustment reasons. John glanced up and caught Harold watching. He raised an eyebrow. Harold turned back to his monitors, fighting the blush that threatened to rise in his cheeks. He hit play.

His reaction to seeing two men walk into Room 3 was visceral: a deep, fierce longing to again have something he’d been missing for a long time. The room looked exactly the same, the chocolate-brown leather of the wing chair, the mahogany of the desk, even the brass desk lamp with it’s green glass shade was still in place. Harold watched the two men kiss passionately for a minute, then step back. One ordered the other to drop his pants, and the Dominant retrieved a paddle from the umbrella-stand in the corner of the room (which also held a variety of whips and canes). Harold’s favorite room was often used for naughty-schoolboy impact play scenes. Harold hit fast forward.

Two scenes (a caning and a spanking) later, John got up and came over to Harold’s desk. He glanced at the screen where a Dominant was laying into his sub’s inner thighs with a riding crop, leaving red welts. John flinched as the crop came down, despite the sound being off. Harold hit pause, and John seemed to shake himself.

“I’m going out to get some lunch. What would you like?”

“Whatever you’re getting for yourself will be fine, Mr. Reese, thank you.”

“You sure? I need to stretch my legs; I don’t mind a walk if there’s something you’re in the mood for.”

“That’s very kind of you Mr. Reese. Anything you choose will be fine, I’m sure.”

John nodded and headed out. As soon as he was gone, Harold headed for the Library’s washroom. He got himself a glass of water and then wet a towel and wiped his face, steeling himself for what was to come on the tape he was currently watching, and the ones he hadn’t even seen yet. Impact play didn’t turn him on in the least, but some of the Dominants, the better ones, to Harold’s mind, made it less about the actual hitting and more about the psychology of why their submissive wanted to be hit. He could tell the difference even on fast-forward. There were longer pauses between the blows, more breaks to check in, to make sure the submissive was okay. More touching, kissing, fondling. Even with the relatively low resolution image, the care and, yes, sometimes even love, came through the screen.

Harold thought about jerking off. The release might make it easier for him to maintain his composure, but he decided not to risk it. John, in a fit of perversity, might decide to get them hot dogs from the street vendor’s cart on the next block, and be back at any moment. So Harold went back to his desk, sat down, and had fast-forwarded through two more paddlings and was at the end of another spanking when he heard the elevator. The scene on the screen was a particularly tender one. The spanking and been thorough, almost severe, but the Dominant had checked in often with kisses and caresses, wiping his Sub’s face and holding him gently when it was over. As John came in and over to his desk, the Dominant was sitting in the big wing chair and pulling his blanket-wrapped submissive into his lap for kisses and cuddles. Harold hit pause reflexively, and the video froze on the two men in a tender embrace.

“That looks nice,” John said softly. Then put a paper sack with Vietnamese script on the desk. “I was in the mood for Pho.” He lifted a container out of the sack at put it at Harold’s elbow, then carefully peeled off the lid. It was Harold’s favorite. From his favorite restaurant. One that didn’t usually do take-out. And was eight blocks away.

“Thank you John; that was very thoughtful,” he said meeting John’s eyes. John held his gaze for a moment, then his eyes slid back to the image on the screen for an instant before taking a leaf-wrapped packet out of the bag and setting it next to Harold’s soup. “Dessert,” he said, and laid out a spoon and napkin, then took the bag with him back to his chair by the window.

Harold had a few spoonfuls of soup and was just about to hit ‘fast-forward’ on the tape to run through the rest of the aftercare for the spanking scene when he suddenly put his spoon down and just managed to refrain from smacking himself on the forehead.

“I am a complete idiot,” he said.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Harold.”

“Why did it not occur to me until just now to run the tapes through facial recognition software, rather than looking at them all?” It was a rhetorical question. Harold knew damn well, why. He had been so fixated on The Bellona Club, on his own membership and activities there, on John and his… reading material, that he hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d been so fixated on the idea of having to sit and watch the tapes with John in the room that it hadn’t occurred to him that he didn’t actually need to. He launched the appropriate software and wrote the few lines of code necessary to get it to play nice with the video of Room 4. Room 4, he recalled as his fingers flew over the keyboard, was dedicated to the shoe and foot fetish crowd, and was decorated as a cross between an upscale shoe shop and a mani-pedi spa. It had over 200 pairs of high heels in stock, half of them in men’s sizes. Harold had been astonished to learn just how popular that particular fetish was.

Harold finished his interface code and hit “go”. It would take the computer ten minutes, at most, to search the tape for Ms Marshall and Chad Sepczynski. He picked up his soup spoon and moved his chair back a little to avoid spilling pho on his keyboard. He wracked his brain for some innocuous topic of conversation, but his eyes kept being drawn to the stack of books by John’s elbow. John seemed oblivious, eating his own soup calmly.

“Is Chad also a member of the club?” John asked. “Does everyone have to be a member, or are guests allowed?”

“Guests are allowed, but they have to be registered and vetted.”

“Vetted?”

“Nothing too involved, I, ah, just wrote a few simple routines that check the the name and address supplied are those of a real person, and that the individual hasn’t been arrested for a violent crime or has any outstanding warrants, restraining orders, that kind of thing.”

“But you assumed Ms Marshall was a member, not a vetted guest.”

“It was a lucky guess. I had hoped to play on Jasmine’s sense of responsibility towards her members, hoping that a threat to Ms Marshall’s safety might convince her to let us see the tape of her session.”

“That’s very devious of you, Harold,” John said. His voice held admiration and there was a small smile on his lips.

Harold was saved from having to reply by his computer beeping to let him know that it had failed to find a match on the tape for Room 4. He fed Room 5 into the machine with a sinking heart. Room 5 was a typical ‘sex dungeon,’ if such a thing could be said to exist. It had a brass bedstead with numerous tie-down points, waterproof sheets, and a cheap, easily replaceable foam mattress. It also had a St. Andrew’s Cross, a set of stocks, multiple suspension bars hanging from the ceiling, and so on. It saw everything from severe floggings to elaborate role-play sessions.

Harold left his desert for later and did some coding while the computer searched through Tape 5. But Harold knew, somehow, that it wouldn’t find anything, that Chloe Marshall’s session with Chad Sepczynski had been in Room 6. Resigned to that, he checked on some of his algorithms until the computer beeped again. He changed the tapes and set the facial recognition search to start again. He reached for the leaf-wrapped package of dessert.

“Would you like some coffee to go with that?” John asked, looking up over the edge of _Real Service_. “I was just going to make some.”

Harold was about to protest that he could make his own coffee, but there was something about the expression on John’s face that made him smile instead, and say, “Yes, thank you.” He unwrapped his dessert, which turned out to be three small sweet fried sesame seed cakes. He hadn’t had them before, and so decided to wait until John returned with the coffee. He watched the progress of the software through the tape for Room 5 until he heard footsteps behind him and turned.

“Here you go,” John handed him a cup and Harold took it with both hands, briefly cupping John’s as he did. And realized that this was something else they did. Had been doing for a while. He took a sip to cover his discomfiture at the realization. They sat with their shoulders touching on park benches. John held an umbrella over both of them in the rain. They gave Bear his bath together, when they could more easily take him to one of three local dog grooming salons. How long had they been making excuses to touch each other without realizing it, Harold wondered.

“These look very good, are they something you’ve had often?”

“No, I prefer the almond cookies, but since you’re so fond of doughnuts, I thought you’d like them.” John raised an eyebrow, making it clear that he was waiting for Harold to oblige him. He did, biting into one of the small fried cakes.

“They are very good, and I do like them very much, thank you John.” Harold used his first name deliberately. Something was happening between them. Harold wasn’t sure what it was, but their relationship was shifting somehow. His computer beeped, pulling them out of the moment. Harold finished chewing his sesame cake, took a swallow of coffee, and put his cup down. John stood nearby, sipping his own coffee while Harold changed tapes.

“Last one?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible they didn’t, ah…”

“If they didn’t, then we’re back to square one.”

“Well then let’s hope they did.”

Sure enough, with thirty seconds, the computer dinged to indicate that it had successfully found a match.

‘Here we go,’ thought Harold as he brought the video up on his monitor. John leaned in, and Harold could see his reflection blink in surprise at the scene. Room 6 was devoted to… mechanical sex. There were three fucking machines, two of which could be used in a variety of different configurations, and the third… was the one that Ms Marshall had apparently selected for her session with Chad. She was dressed in a reasonably tasteful dominatrix outfit, complete with black leather, strategically-placed silver zippers, red high-heeled boots, and a riding crop. He was naked except for a black studded collar. She pointed with the crop and he started to climb into the specially-designed restraint. It was essentially a chair without a seat. It had supports for the thighs and calves, a padded back festooned with wide leather straps, and armrests complete with heavy manacles.

He was evidently not moving as fast as she wanted, because she gave him a smack on the ass with the crop before he managed to turn and settle himself.

“I’m afraid we’d better have the sound on,” Harold said, un-muting the recording. For a moment there was only the sound of heavy breathing, the creak of leather, and the jingle of buckles as Ms Marshall fastened Chad into the ‘chair.’ As she tightened the manacles around his wrists he gave a low moan.

“Now, you know the rules. No noise until I ask you a question. Are you going to be a bad boy today?” she asked.

“No mistress,” he said.

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” She smacked him a few times on the insides of the thighs with the crop, raising red welts. Then she moved over to a cabinet and took out a box. Harold pursed his lips together tightly, wondering exactly how unpleasant this was going to be for John to watch. As she started to attach the electrical contact pads to his inner thighs, Harold glanced at John, who ignored him. Once they were in place, Ms Marshall stroked Chad’s cock with the tip of the crop. He was erect and straining against his bonds already, and the sharp ‘crack’ as she brought the crop down on his cock startled both Harold and John. On the screen, Chad’s mouth was open in a silent, gaping scream.

“Ouch,” John said quietly.

Ms Marshall was now fastening a heavy leather-and-metal cock ring around Chad’s limp cock and balls. A wire led from the cock ring and plugged into a TENS unit.

“Is that safe?” John asked. “I understand that it’s consensual, but I’ve seen electricity cause heart attacks in healthy young men.”

“The TENS unit limits the amount of voltage that can be applied and carefully controls the frequency. Jasmine makes sure that all electrical equipment is checked and tested before and after each use. And someone will have been monitoring this feed live, at the time, just to make sure. It’s as safe as it can reasonably be and still allow people to…”

But John was already nodding his understanding.

“I never…” Harold paused and turned pink, but he needed John to know. “That’s not the sort of thing I ever did, at The Bellona Club.”

“From what I remember, simple bondage is more your style,” John said drily.

It took Harold a second to realize that John was referring to his own… ‘recruitment,’ when Harold had arranged to have him tied to a bed in a hotel room. Harold could feel his ears burning in a bright red blush.

On the screen, Ms Marshall was twiddling the dials on the TENS unit and Chad was writhing in his bonds and moaning.

“Now, you know what happens when you make noise.” She gave him a few smacks on the chest, the last two centered right over his nipples, which caused him to yell. Ms Marshall gave a put-upon sigh and went back over to the cabinet, this time emerging with a ball gag which she fitted into his mouth, then put a red rubber ball in his hand.

“Safe signal,” John murmured, confirming his newfound knowledge. Harold nodded.

“Now, I can tell you’re in a mood today, so I think the thing to do is give you a good reaming. Don’t you agree?”

Chad squealed indignantly behind his gag, and John was treated to a demonstration of the full extent of the ingenuity of Jasmine’s play spaces, as Ms Marshall tipped the ‘chair’ back forty-five degrees and started to work the machinery under the non-existent seat. One last trip to the cabinet produced a large, thick dildo and a bottle of lubricant. She held the dildo up in front of his eyes.

“Have you ever taken anything this big before? I wonder. You’re going to take this for me, aren’t you?”

Chad whined behind his gag and Harold’s eyes went automatically to the ball in his hand, but his fist remained clenched tight. Without any further preliminaries, Ms Marshall coated the dildo in lube and pressed it between his cheeks. Holding it there with one hand, she turned the dial on the TENS machine up a notch, eliciting a moan. Harold and John saw the dildo slip in an inch.

“That’s right, you’re going to take this. All of it. Every last inch.” She turned the machine up again, and then reached for her crop and started to pepper his chest with blows while the dildo slid inch by inexorable inch into Chad’s ass.

“He must be one hell of a masochist,” John murmured.

“Yes. If nothing else, we’ve learned that at least,” Harold said, his voice heavy with irony. It was a paltry piece of information for the amount of effort (not to mention embarrassment) they had expended on the case.

Once the dildo was all the way in, Ms Marshall put her crop down and worked with the machinery under the chair for a minute. Harold knew what was coming, but John’s eyebrows went up in surprise when she touched a button and the dildo, now attached to a rod, attached to a flywheel, started to pump slowly in and out, accompanied by loud moans from Chad. Then the whole works: fucking machine, chair, and writhing, moaning Sub, was tilted upright again, and Ms Marshall settled herself on a stool between his spread knees, the controls for the TENS unit in easy reach, and her crop back in her hand.

For the next few minutes, Harold tried to stop himself from shifting uncomfortably in his chair while John stood rigidly at his shoulder, leaning in to look at the monitor, his face very carefully blank. On the tape, Ms Marshall alternated between hitting her submissive with the crop, and reaching under the ‘chair’ to increase the speed of the fucking machine. Within ten minutes, Chad’s chest was bright red and swollen, his cock was red, rigid, and leaking, and the fucking machine was reaming him at almost its top speed. Chad was straining in his bonds and screaming behind his gag, but the red rubber ball remained clutched tightly in his right hand.

“None of that, now. You know you don’t get to come until you’ve answered my questions,” Ms Marshall said and smacked his cock with the crop. Both Harold and John flinched in sympathy. However, it appeared that the next phase of the scene was starting, because she got up from her stool and removed the gag.

Over the next five minutes, accompanied by more strikes to his chest and cock, Ms Marshall made Chad confess to having wet the bed as a boy, lusted after his fourth grade teacher, hidden in the wardrobe as a teenager to watch his father have sex with his mistress, and fantasized about getting held down and fucked in the ass by one of his bodyguards.

“Very good, boy. Now, just one more question and then I’ll let you come. You want that, don’t you boy?”

“Yes Mistress, yes please.” Chad sobbed.

“Tell me something… dangerous.”

Harold and John glanced at each other.

“I… I can’t Mistress.” His eyes were wide and full of fear, now, but Ms Marshall either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She smacked his cock with the crop, and then put it down, leaned in and grasped his red, swollen nipples between her fingers.

“Please Mistress, don’t. I can’t… I–” his words turned into a scream as his nipples were viciously pinched and twisted. “I… fuck. Fuck… My father. He’s making a deal. A big one. The biggest ever. He’s going to retire after this and I’m going to take over the, uh, the business.”

“Tell me more about the deal,” she said, releasing his nipples and sitting back on her stool. She turned the fucking machine down to it’s lowest setting, and the TENS machine to its highest. Chad gasped and writhed and blubbered.

“I can’t tell you. I can’t. He’d kill me.”

“Of course you can, boy,” her voice was smooth and silky now, and she reached out and ran the fingers of one hand lightly along the underside of his rigid cock.

“Please. Please mistress, I need to come. I need… Please.”

“Tell me what I want to know,” she said, gripping his balls and squeezing.

“He’s… he’s going to be buying two million dollars worth of cocaine from a Colombian cartel. He’s giving them guns, too, so that they can take over their entire province.”

“Very good, and when is this deal happening?”

“I can’t, mistress, please…”

“Of course you can. Now be a good boy and tell me, and I’ll make you feel so good.” Ms Marshall grasped his cock and gave it one slow stroke.

“You’ve got to admire her technique,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s very effective.”

“And potentially deadly,” Harold said as, on the tape, Chad blurted out the time and place of the buy.

John’s expression said he couldn’t disagree. They they both watched as Ms Marshall brought her moaning, sobbing submissive off with a few hard strokes on his cock. Then she stopped the fucking machine, turned off the TENS, unbuckled and unstrapped him, wrapped him in a blanket, led him to the bed, and let him lie with his head in her lap while she stroked his hair and told him what a good boy he was.

“The problem now,” Harold said when it became clear that the scene was winding down. “Is that we don’t know if that was an elaborate set-up to get specific information about the buy out of him, or if she just pulled on the thread that she happened to find and got in over her head.”


	5. Chapter 5

Following the lead that their case might revolve around Frank Sepczynski’s major drug buy, John poked around the edges of his organization until he was able to be in the right place at the right time to force pair his phone. That enabled them to overhear the shouted conversation between father and son, where Chad finally admitted to his father that he’d told his ‘girlfriend’ about the buy.

“Just pillow talk, Papa. I was… I was bragging a bit about how important you are, that’s all,” he lied badly, but his father seemed too angry to notice. “She won’t go to the cops or anything. And besides, I’ve got two of our guys watching her all the time, just in case.”

“That’s not good enough. What if she makes an anonymous phone call? No, this needs to be dealt with properly.”

“You can’t kill her, Papa. Please.”

“Kill? Who said anything about killing? No, I’m going to send a couple of boys to pick her up and bring her here. Just for a couple of days, until the buy is done. You love her?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so.”

“You gonna marry her?”

“Um, well, we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“If you love her you should marry her. And if you’re gonna marry her, then she needs to know about the family business.”

“Papa, I should go with the boys. So she knows it’s me. I don’t want her to think she’s being kidnapped. She’s… well she’s a feisty lady and, well, things might not go so smooth if I’m not there to explain.”

“You don’t move out of my sight until I say. You can explain it to her when she gets here.”

“We should intervene,” Harold said, turning to John. “As Chad pointed out, Ms Marshall doesn’t seem the type to go along with a couple of unknown mobsters without a fight.”

“Indeed.” John was already checking his gun.

“I should come with you.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“Ms Marshall isn’t going to go quietly with you any more than she would with Sepczynski’s henchmen.”

“I’ll be persuasive.”

“It will be much better if I explain the situation to her. We have some, ah, common ground to work from. And she won’t see me as a threat. She’ll hear me out, at least.” Harold knew John hated him being in any kind of danger, but this time his case was fairly strong. “Besides, if we leave right now, we’ll get there long before Sepczynski’s henchmen show up.”

“Okay, but if she doesn’t listen to you, I’m coming in.”

“Fine.”

~~~~~~

The plan was a good one, and it should have gone smoothly. Harold got past the men that Chad had watching Ms Marshall's building without any difficulty by exaggerating his limp and looking innocuous. It took a while, though, for him to gain Chloe Marshall’s confidence and explain the situation.

“But what about Chad? Is he going to be all right? What will his father do when his henchmen don’t bring me back? Maybe I should go with them?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Ms Marshall,” Harold was saying when John spotted a black sedan pulling up to the apartment building.

“Finch, we’ve got company. I’m coming in. Get Ms Marshall to the back stairwell, now!”

“Ms Marshall we need to leave, Mr. Sepczynski’s men have just arrived to abduct you.” Harold said, trying to bustle her out of her apartment while the sounds of fighting came over his earpiece.

“John, What’s going on?” Harold’s voice was sharp and concerned.

“Who is John?”

“My associate. Who is currently trying to stop four large armed men from coming up here and…” Two men burst in, followed by John, followed by one more goon. Harold tried to pull Ms Marshall out of the way, but she shook him off and grabbed for her purse. In between punches, John put one hand in the middle of Harold’s chest and gave him a shove that sent him sprawling into a wall. One of the goons grabbed Ms Marshall from behind and Harold looked around in vain for a weapon of any kind, a lamp, a candlestick… But there was nothing, so he simply launched himself at the man.

“Harold!” John shouted, but Harold was feeling disoriented. His limbs suddenly felt heavy and weak. The goon he was trying to pull off Ms Marshall lurched to the side and shook him off, swearing. Harold grabbed for the back of the sofa to hold himself up. There was a buzzing sound, and the goon collapsed. Harold tried to see where John was still fighting with the two other men, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. Something was wrong. Badly wrong.

“John,” Harold managed to say before his legs gave out under him and he slid to the floor.

“Harold. Harold, open your eyes. Look at me. What happened, did you hit your head?”

Harold tried to shake his head ‘no’ but he could barely move. “Sedative,” he managed to mumble.

“One of these guys must have had a syringe, that’s how they were going to get you out of here. Try to find it so we’ll know what they used on him,” John said to Ms Marshall. “It’s okay, Harold. You just close your eyes and take a nap,” Harold felt John cupping the side of his face reassuringly, so he stopped fighting to stay awake and let his eyes slip closed. John wouldn’t let him come to any harm. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was John calling Detective Carter. “I’ve got a hot tip for you, and a woman who’ll be needing police protection for the next couple of days.”

~~~~~~

Harold woke up slowly to a persistent prodding from his bladder. Something was off, but he didn’t realize what it was until he opened his eyes and saw John sitting in a chair beside the bed. John’s bed. In John’s apartment.

“Good morning,” John said with a small smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Hung over.”

“Dr. Tillman said you might have a headache. Here.” John stood and opened a bottle of water that had been sitting ready beside the bed and handed it to him. Despite the fact that he needed to use the washroom, Harold found he was quite thirsty, and drained half the bottle. Then he looked around for his glasses, which John had picked up and was handing to him.

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I need to,” Harold glanced towards John’s bathroom.

“Of course. Your clothes are hanging on the back of the door.”

Harold climbed out of bed (John’s bed, his brain helpfully reminded him), acutely aware that he was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and undershirt. John must have undressed him. He made his way slowly, stiffly towards the bathroom and shut the door behind himself, then grabbed hold of the counter. He looked a mess: hair disheveled, eyes still a little bloodshot. He wondered how long he’d been out. Long enough that that his bad leg had stiffened up while he was sleeping. Or maybe he strained it during the fight, or when he fell.

Bladder dealt with, Harold noticed that not only was his freshly cleaned and pressed suit hanging on the back of the bathroom door, but there was a new toothbrush, comb, and disposable razor laid out next to the sink, along with a stack of fluffy clean towels. A shower and shave would certainly make him feel better...

Clean and dressed, Harold felt more like himself. And as he emerged from the bathroom he smelled coffee brewing and heard the sizzle of bacon. He made his way to the kitchen.

“You didn’t have to go to any trouble,” Harold said when he saw the stack of pancakes along with bacon and scrambled eggs.

“No trouble. Coffee’s almost brewed, and there’s juice on the table. Go sit down, this’ll be ready in a minute.”

Something was up with John. Harold didn’t know what, but despite his unusual geniality (or perhaps because of it) Harold knew something was a little bit… off. So instead of going to sit down, Harold waited until John had turned off the stove and dished up the bacon.

“Thank you, John,” he said, catching John’s eyes and making his sincerity obvious.

“It’s just breakfast, Harold,” John said, gesturing with a plate, but holding Harold’s eyes.

“I meant for last night. Bringing me here; calling Dr. Tillman.”

John lowered his eyes for an instant, but then looked back at Harold. “Just making sure you were okay,” he said softly.

The coffee maker dinged, and John gestured with the plate in his hand again. “Go, sit. The pancakes will get cold.”

Harold went to the table and let John serve him breakfast.

During the meal, John filled him in on the details he’d missed while he was unconscious.

“… so Carter has Sepczynski and his organization under surveillance, and Ms Marshall, who turned out to be an innocent bystander after all, is in a safe-house with Detective Fusco.” Harold couldn’t help but quirk a bit of a smile at John’s completely deadpan delivery on the last part of that sentence. He was trying to figure out what, if anything, needed to be said to put the matter of The Bellona Club firmly behind them.

“Why don’t you go sit on the sofa, I’ll bring you another cup of coffee,” John suggested with carefully constructed casualness.

“I should really be getting back to the library,” Harold said, climbing to his feet. He was deflecting, he knew, but dammit, he didn’t want to deal with this. Not now. Preferably not ever. His private life was just that, private, and the fact that John had gotten an unexpected glimpse of it…

“Dr. Tillman said you should take it easy today,” John said. His tone was mild but his eyes were intense and his grip on the stack of dirty plates was tighter than it should have been. Harold resigned himself to letting John get whatever it was off his chest.

“Well perhaps another cup of coffee before I leave, then. Thank you, John.” Harold wasn’t sure why he hadn’t switched back to ‘Mr. Reese’ yet. Maybe being in John’s apartment (the apartment he had bought and decorated for John, his brain supplied) was reminding him that they were friends now, rather than just colleagues.

Harold sat on the sofa to be out of the way while John cleared the dishes off the table. John brought him coffee and put it on the side table. “I’m just going to start the dishwasher. Be right back,” he said and disappeared again. Harold sipped his coffee and looked around, spotting the few personal touches that John had added to his living space. There was a small bookshelf with a number of books, some from the library but also others Harold didn’t recognize. A painting hanging on the wall that Harold realized was by Dr. Tillman’s partner, Vicky. Not much else, though. Well, except for in the kitchen. He knew that John had filled the kitchen with pots and pans and an array of equipment and gadgets that Harold couldn’t even fathom the use of. But he very much liked the idea of John settling in here. Of John being happy.

John came back into the room and Harold saw the tension in him immediately. Something was off, and not only because John wasn’t carrying a coffee cup of his own. The reason became apparent a moment later when John sank to his knees in front of Harold, hands clasped behind his ramrod-straight back, head bowed, and eyes deferentially lowered.

“Get up, Mr. Reese,” Harold said, letting the fear that gripped him come out in his voice as irritation. “We’re not doing this.” He was desperately afraid of what would happen if he didn’t end this foolishness of John’s right now. Afraid of what might happen if he let himself take what John was naively offering.

John looked up at him, but didn’t move other than to say, “We’ve been doing this for a while. We might as well do it right.” His voice was flat but Harold could hear the strain in it.

“Well, we’re not doing it any more. Get up.”

“I want this, Harold.” John’s voice was low now, pleading.

“That’s not the kind of relationship I want with you, Mr. Reese. So please get off your knees right now.” Harold forced his voice to be sharp. The sight of John on his knees in front of him… for him, was making a sparks of want curl in his gut.

“Don’t lie to me Harold, please. Not about this.” John said, his eyes boring into Harold’s with a new intensity.

“You have no idea what you’re saying.” But as Harold spoke he knew he had already lost. Because he was lying and John knew it. Because he wanted this so much... But now that it was within his grasp, Harold was terrified.

“I’m not asking you to tie me up and whip me,” John said, still pinning Harold with his eyes. “But I want to submit to you. Please–” The word came out broken and John swallowed noisily. “Please, it’s been so long since I felt safe.”

Harold felt like he’d been punched in the gut. The idea that he could provide that for John… He closed his eyes to give himself a brief respite from the image of John on his knees, and drew in a deep, calming, centering breath. When he opened them again he was back in control. Because John needed him to be.

“Get up and sit here. I’m not discussing this with you on your knees,” Harold said as brusquely as he could manage when what he really wanted to do was wrap John up in his arms and never let go.

“Yes, Sir,” John said as he got up off the floor and sat next to Harold on the sofa.

“Don’t call me that,” Harold said sharply. It sounded wrong, coming from John’s mouth when he knew what kind of men John had called ‘Sir’ in the past.

“I’m sorry,” John’s eyes were downcast and his shoulders dropped.

“Just ‘Harold’ will do fine. Now look at me and tell me what you want.” Harold was treading as carefully as he possibly could. His hands were clasped tightly on his knees, as if gripping them would help hold his thoughts together when they were threatening to spin out of control. The idea of John submitting to him was so enticing, so powerfully erotic...

“The… the closest thing in the books I read was ‘service submission’.”

“Forget the books. And ignore completely anything you may have read on the internet. Just tell me in your own words what you want,” Harold said.

“I want to make you happy,” John said, looking at him earnestly. “However I can. Whatever you want from me. I want… I want to cook for you. And… Take care of you. In whatever way you… you’d like.”

“Keep going. Tell me everything you want.”

“I’d like to undress you again sometime when you’re conscious.” The tips of John’s ears turned pink, and Harold was astonished at the idea that John was actually blushing. “If, if that’s something you…” John trailed off, and Harold remained silent, regarding him impassively and making it clear that he was waiting for John to continue.

“I want to make you feel good.” And now John’s voice dropped to a whisper and his gaze slid down to his lap. “I want to touch you.”

The want that curled in Harold’s belly was growing, urging him to reach out and take what was being offered. Harold tightened his grip on his knees, still waiting to hear all that John had to say.

“To… give you pleasure.” John’s words sounded like they were being forced out through broken glass.

“John, are you talking about sexual intimacy?” Harold couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

John looked up at him then. “Yes, if that’s something you want. If you would enjoy it.”

“John,” Harold said gently, “this kind of relationship doesn’t have to include sex. Surely your reading told you that, at least.”

“It did. But I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes.”

“I’m very sorry, I thought I was hiding it better than that.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It makes this easier.” John pulled in a breath. “I want you to touch me. However you want. I want–”

This time Harold didn’t wait for him to finish. “But John, you’re straight.”

“Not entirely.” John’s eyes dropped to his knees.

“You’ve had a sexual relationship with another man before?”

“When I was working for the CIA, there were times that the mission required… I didn’t hate it. It wasn’t much different than being with a woman that I was ordered to–”

“That’s not the same–” Harold tried to interrupt again, but this time John wouldn’t let him.

“I think about you sometimes at night.” John said, his eyes flicking to the bed at the other end of the loft to make it clear what he meant, then he looked straight at Harold. “I imagine you touching me. Kissing me. I want that. I want you.”

For the first time in a very long time, Harold felt like he was in over his head. Data. He needed more data. That would let him make decisions. Good decisions. “John, I need you to answer me honestly. Have you ever been forced, or coerced, to have sexual contact with someone, male or female, against your will?”

John shook his head. “I could have refused the assignments.” He shrugged. “I didn’t.”

That was something at least. The next question came tumbling out without Harold having thought it over. “Have you ever been penetrated?”

“Only medically,” John said, and that pink flush of the tips of his ears was back.

“Is it something you want?” And as the words came out of his mouth, Harold realized that simply by asking the question, he had implicitly agreed to pursue this… whatever ‘this’ was.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Then it won’t happen. John,” Harold said, reaching for John’s hands and taking them in his own. John looked up then, his eyes reflecting depths of emotion that Harold had only ever seen once before, on a rooftop, in the rain. “Nothing will happen between us unless it is something you’ve specifically told me you want. That’s the way this works. It’s not about forcing you to do something against your will. It’s about giving you something you want. Something you need.”

“I want to feel safe. Just for a little while.”

“I know, John.” Harold’s heart ached with what he desperately wanted to be able to give this man. “We’ll try. I can’t promise you that it will work, but we’ll try.”

“When?”

“Not today. I need some time to think. We both do.”

~~~~~~

A week later they’d wrapped up a new number using diplomacy rather than force of arms, for once, and were back at the library. John was taking the number’s picture and details down from the board while Harold reset his computer searches.

Harold cleared his throat, and John turned. “This is somewhat awkward, but how would you feel about having me over for dinner tomorrow night? Assuming we don’t get another number, of course.”

John went still. “Of course. Just for dinner?” he asked, his voice a little tight.

“After dinner I thought we could… explore some of the things we discussed last week. That is if you’re still interested–”

“Yes. I’m still interested. How’s seven? For dinner.” Outwardly John appeared calm, but his nerves came through in his clipped words.

“Seven is fine, John.” It would have felt absurd to call him ‘Mr. Reese’ under the circumstances.

John nodded. “I’ll head out to do some grocery shopping, then.” John said, putting the picture down and turning to leave. “Is there,” he stopped, and turned back. “Is there anything I should do to… prepare?”

It took Harold a moment to figure out what John meant, and once he did he schooled his features carefully into a neutral expression. “Just whatever you’d normally do for a… date.”

But John nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Call me if there’s a number. Otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow at seven.”

“Yes,” Harold said and watched John leave.

~~~~~~

The next afternoon, after spending the day at the library doing some routine coding, Harold went back to Gull’s apartment. It felt right to prepare for his evening with John there; showering and shaving particularly carefully, then picking a suit from the wide selection in the closet. He decided on a light grey pinstripe three piece. Normally he’d go with something softer, warmer, a little more casual for a social evening with John, but ‘I want to undress you,’ rang in Harold's ears. Having John peel him out of the suit layer-by-layer was something he expected they would both enjoy immensely. Assuming they got that far tonight.

Harold had spent much of the week planning the myriad ways tonight’s scene could possibly unfold, setting up contingency after contingency in his mind like a flow chart. His first priority was to make John feel safe, his second to make the experience as good as possible for him. Harold would get pleasure out of simply doing those two things for John, regardless of how physically intimate they were or were not on this particular occasion.

As he packed his toothbrush and a clean shirt and underwear into his satchel, he realized that he was assuming he’d be staying over. He put that on his mental list of things to discuss with John before anything else happened between them.

Dinner was, of course, delicious. John was an excellent cook and Harold made a point of making his appreciation clear more than once during the meal. John’s small, happy smile at the praise was a delight to see. After pan-seared scallops carbonara with an apple and raisin salad and tiramisu for desert, chatting about food, recipes, and travel all the while, Harold was more relaxed and confident that the rest of the evening was going to go well. When John suggested deferentially that he finish his coffee in the living room, Harold smiled tenderly at him, and went.

Doing it here, at John’s apartment, the one place he felt reasonably secure and therefore would be most likely to be able to relax, had been part of Harold’s plan. So he sat, coffee set aside and forgotten, waiting. Preparing himself mentally and emotionally to dominate John Reese, who was about to put himself willingly into Harold’s hands. There was always a little thrill at this moment. Part anticipation, part fear, part confidence, part (there was no point denying it) sexual excitement. Harold had a dozen different contingencies for ways to make sure the encounter left them both satisfied. Which one came to pass depended entirely on how John reacted to the first part of the scene that Harold had planned.

The noises from the kitchen stopped, and the lights in that part of the loft went out, leaving the lamp by Harold’s elbow and another near the bed the only illumination. John rounded the end of the sofa and stood there uncertainly.

“Sit down, please,” Harold said with a small smile. “There are a couple of things we need to discuss before we go any further.”

John sat, his big hands resting on his knees in a parody of relaxation.

“First of all, I need to ask one last time. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?”

“Yes.” John looked straight at him, his eyes full of hope and a little bit of fear, but no doubt.

“Very well. The first and most important thing is that I promise to do everything in my power to keep you safe. I don’t want anything we do together to harm you in any way. To that end, have you chosen a safe-word?”

John’s throat worked. “Ordos” he said. Harold’s eyebrows went up, and John shrugged. “It seemed… appropriate.”

“All right. If you say ‘Ordos,’ then we will stop whatever we’re doing, and we’ll talk about what’s wrong. But I’m not going to ignore you if you say ‘stop,’ or even ’wait,’ or ‘slow down,’ or ‘I need a minute.’ While we’re learning how to be together, I need you to tell me what’s good and what’s not. And also what you want, what you need from me.” Harold spoke gently, and saw John relax a little.

“Nothing will happen that we didn’t discuss last week. And just to be absolutely clear; John do you want me to touch you sexually?”

John held Harold’s gaze steadily as he said, “Yes.”

“Then I will. And do you want to climax?” Harold managed to ask with a straight face and a smooth voice. John made a choked sound that Harold realized was a laugh when he saw the corner of John’s mouth quirk into the beginnings of a grin.

“Yes, please.”

“All right.” Harold smiled. “And after, when we’re, ah, finished. Would you prefer me to stay or leave?”

John looked puzzled for a minute, then his eyes darted to the bed as he realized what Harold was asking. “Stay. If you want to.”

“I would very much like to share your bed, John,” Harold said, and that, of all things, brought the blush back to the tips of John’s ears.

“Is there anything else you want to ask me, anything at all?”

John shook his head, and so Harold reached out, as he’d done during their discussion the previous week, and took John’s hands in his. He brought them to his lips and kissed John’s rough, scarred knuckles, first one hand, then the other. “I need you to know how very deeply I care for you, John. And how honored I am that you’ve asked me for this.”

John closed his hands around Harold’s and gave a slight tug. Harold let his fingers be kissed in turn. It felt strangely like sealing a contract.

“A few years ago I would have sworn that I couldn’t love anyone or anything, ever again. But then I realized that I had stopped feeling cold and empty whenever you were around.” John said it matter-of-factly, but his eyes didn’t leave Harold’s face.

Harold blinked and swallowed, profoundly moved. They he asked quietly, “Are you ready to start?”

“Yes.” John released his hands.

“Then kneel for me, John, please.” Harold spread his knees wide and glanced down at the rug beneath his feet. With easy grace, John slid off the sofa to his knees and took position, back ramrod straight, shoulders back, hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed on the double-Windsor knot at Harold’s throat. He was beautiful, and Harold’s hands trembled very slightly at the raw power that John was offering up so freely. John’s posture was too stiff, however. Harold wanted him softer, even before they began.

“A little closer, please,” he said, sitting forward on the sofa cushion and spreading his knees as far apart as he comfortably could, then urging John to shuffle in until the sides of his rib cage brushed the insides of Harold’s knees. “That’s better,” he said, letting his legs relax and making that their first point of contact, feeling the warmth of John’s body through the fabric of his suit trousers. “Look up at me.”

John only had to tilt his head back slightly to comply.

“Very good. Now close your eyes.”

There was a beat and Harold wondered if John was going to object, or even safe-word. But then his eyes slipped closed. Harold knew he needed to be careful, however, and so before he even raised his hand, he said, “I’m going to touch your face.”

John’s shoulders relaxed, and Harold knew he’d made the right call. He’d tell John everything he was about to do from now on, for this first session at least. With his left hand resting on his knee, Harold raised his right and traced the lines in John’s forehead with his fingers. John shivered once and then was still. Harold slid his fingers up into John’s hairline, then down around the back of his ear to his jaw. John’s face relaxed, becoming softer, and Harold raised his other hand. He traced both of John’s eyebrows, his cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw. Harold left one hand cupping John’s jaw and lifted the other to the bridge of his nose, delicate fingertips on John’s left eyelid with a feather-light touch. Over to the shell of his ear, then into his hair, combing his fingers through it. That got the first obvious reaction, an exhale that was almost a noise. Harold let that hand drift down to the back of John’s neck and rested it there while the other gently traced John’s right eyelid, then slid across his cheek to rest on his lips.

John’s lips quivered, then stilled.

“You’re doing very well, John,” Harold said, tracing his lips with the tip of one finger. He’d taste them, later, if all went well. His hand left John’s mouth and drifted down across his jaw to his throat, moving with slowly exaggerated care over the bump of his Adam’s apple. John stilled, then swallowed convulsively once Harold’s fingers were lying in the hollow of his throat. Harold slid his hand into the open neck of John’s shirt, resting it on the thick muscle at the join of neck and shoulder and kneading lightly. He did the same with his other hand and caressed the sides of John’s neck with sweeps of his thumbs.

“Open your eyes now.” John did, his pupils reacting to the light and he squinted for a moment before relaxing. “How are you feeling so far?”

“Fine,” John said automatically, then after a breath. “Good.”

“Good. Now I’d like you to get up and take your shirt off, then go stand over by the foot of the bed.”

John blinked, but rose to his feet and took a step back, then unbuttoned his shirt. Harold watched. He’d spent the last couple of years carefully not looking, so now he was going to damn well look his fill at the broad shoulders and muscular arms and toned stomach with it’s enticing line of dark hair disappearing under John’s belt buckle. Harold felt warm in his three-piece suit, and he knew his face was flushing, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need to hide the effect John had on him any more.

John tugged his shirt tails out of his pants, undid his cuffs and stripped off the shirt, then, as instructed, walked over to the end of the loft. He balled the shirt up and tossed it towards a hamper in the corner of the room, then glanced over at Harold, who nodded. John wouldn’t be needing his shirt again tonight. John fell into an ‘at ease’ stance, but his eyes were fixed on where Harold was getting up from the sofa and crossing the room.

“Be still for me now John,” Harold said as he laid a hand on the side of John’s neck. “And please close your eyes again. I’m going to touch your chest.”

Harold began to run his hands slowly, reverently, over John’s bare chest. “So beautiful,” he murmured to himself as he did. A small noise escaped John’s mouth. Harold continued the gentle touches. “It’s okay, John. Make all the noise you need to, or want to.” Harold slid one hand back up to John’s face, cupping his jaw and tracing his cheekbone, while the other stroked his chest, sweeping across one nipple with the palm of his hand.

“Harold,” John whispered.

"What is it John? What do you need?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Harold said soothingly, continuing to run his hands over John’s chest and arms, touching what he’d always wanted to touch. Feeling what he’d always wanted to feel; though he’d imagined John being in control of any encounter that came about between them. Harold would have given up control, gladly, if that meant he could have John like this, or any way, really. But the fact that it had turned out like this, that John was standing at his request and trembling under his hands was so much sweeter. “I’m going to move behind you now,” Harold said.

Harold stepped around and pressed himself up against John’s back, the buttons of his waistcoat no doubt digging into John’s spine, and the hard line of Harold’s erection hitting the back of John’s thigh, just under his ass. John made a sound like a soft whimper and Harold put his arms around him, one crossing his chest and gripping his shoulder and the other cradling his belly.

“It’s all right. I’ve got you.” Harold kissed John’s back between his shoulder blades, which elicited another small, broken sound. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” Harold moved his hands on John’s body, going back to touching, feeling, taking what he wanted. “Open your eyes if that makes you more comfortable, love,” he said, the endearment slipping out unexpectedly. But Harold couldn’t bring himself to regret it. What he felt for John was love, there was no question about it, and he was fairly sure those feelings were matched, in whatever way John was capable of.

He felt John’s body relax in his arms, and continued to stroke his skin. “That’s it, that’s good. You’re doing so well for me, John. So very well.” Harold stretched up to kiss the back of his neck, which elicited a shiver, and also incidentally nudged John’s ass with his hard cock. Even with layers of fabric between their bodies, it felt fantastic. Harold was starting to feel overheated in the confines of his suit, and it was just about time to do something about that. He let one of his hands slide back and forth across John’s chest, now purposely dragging warm skin across the small nubs of John’s nipples, and drawing a soft moan from him. Harold’s slid his other hand down to John’s belly, letting it rest just above his belt buckle and pressing lightly, but firmly.

John’s breathing got faster, louder, harsher.

“How are you doing John?” Harold asked, pressing another kiss to his spine.

“I’m okay,” John said raggedly after a breath.

Harold kissed his back again, and again. “To be honest,” he said kissing the back of one shoulder blade. “I was hoping for better than ‘okay’.” Harold kissed the other shoulder, all the while rubbing his palm back and forth across John’s nipples.

John barked out a short laugh. “I’m good. This feels very, very good.”

“I’m glad,” Harold said. “I’m going to move away now,” he said, dropping his arms and stepping back. John made a small sound of loss. “Open your eyes, if they’re closed, and turn and face me.”

When he turned, John’s face was softer than Harold had ever seen it, calmer, more relaxed. Some of the ever-present tautness was gone from his body, his limbs were loose, for once not poised to strike at any moment. Harold smiled. This was what he’d wanted to do for John, part of it, anyway. “You may undress me now,” he said.

John stared at him for a moment, and then swallowed. “I should get a hanger, for your suit,” he said, glancing towards the closet.

“Yes, good idea.” Harold watched as John crossed the room, and returned with a wooden hanger that he put down on the bed. Then he turned to face Harold, and hesitated. Harold spread his hands away from his sides in a ‘Go ahead, then,’ gesture. John swallowed again, and then raised his own hands and carefully slipped Harold’s suit jacket from his shoulders. John laid the jacket on the bed, and turned to Harold’s tie. Despite his earlier hesitation, John’s hands were steady and sure on the silk, unknotting it carefully and sliding the tie out of Harold’s shirt collar, then laying it on top of the jacket. He dealt with the waistcoat next, unbuttoning carefully, one button at a time, and then sliding the fabric off.

John paused, considering, then quietly said, “shoes next,” and knelt. Harold put his hands on John’s shoulders for balance, and let him unlace and slide each shoe off in turn. John placed them out of the way, just under the edge of the bed, then dealt with Harold’s socks in the same way. Having John’s sure, strong fingers glide over the bones of his ankles shouldn’t be this arousing, Harold told himself fruitlessly. John looked up from where he knelt, and Harold had a flash to a future evening together, one where he’d next tell John to pleasure him with his mouth. That was going to be a while yet, Harold knew, but he wasn’t impatient. The things he wanted from John, with John, in the meantime were going to be very satisfying. He nodded to indicate that John should continue.

Still on his knees, John reached for Harold’s belt and undid the buckle, and then his fly. He slid Harold’s trousers off his narrow hips, his attention on lifting Harold’s feet out of each pants leg, and then retrieving said pants off the floor, so that it wasn’t until he leaned back to stand up that he noticed the pronounced tent in Harold’s boxers. Harold saw him catch his breath and go still; from discomfort or to stop himself from touching? Harold could only guess, but dearly hoped it was the latter.

John stood and started to unbutton Harold’s shirt, easing two fingers of one hand into his collar behind the top button to avoid putting any pressure on his throat. Harold couldn’t help his soft intake of breath at John’s touch, and John’s eyes flicked to his in concern, but what he saw made the tips of his ears go pink again. John unbuttoned Harold’s collar, then the rest of his shirt, letting the fabric hang open. Harold had foregone his usual undershirt this evening specifically to expedite this part of the process. John reached down and took Harold’s left hand in both of his, lifting the knuckles to his lips and pressing a soft kiss there before turning Harold’s hand over. He kissed the palm as well, his lips warm and delicate against Harold’s skin, and only his prodigious self control stopped him from moaning. John undid the buttons of his shirt cuffs, then released his hand and repeated his actions on Harold’s right.

By the time John slipped Harold’s shirt off his shoulders, they were both breathing heavily, and a brief glance let Harold confirm that John was as erect as he was. John put his hands on Harold’s hips, just above the waistband of his boxers, and looked at Harold for some indication of permission to continue. Harold nodded. John slid the fabric down, kneeling as Harold stepped out of his silk shorts first with one foot, then the other. John’s eyes were on the garment in his hand, which he folded, then turned his attention to the clothes lying on the bed next to the hanger.

“I’ll just…” he said, picking up the hanger and pants.

“Yes, thank you.” Harold said, standing still and watching. He was surprisingly relaxed being nude in John’s presence, but he knew that standing on his bad leg for very much longer would get uncomfortable. And besides, having John on his knees again… Harold waited until John stepped over to the closet to hang up the clothes, then sat down on the edge of the bed, knees spread wide. When John turned back, Harold said simply, “Kneel, John.”

John didn’t need to be told where or how. He sank gracefully to his knees between Harold’s thighs, back straight, hands clasped behind his back, his breath coming in fast pants.

“Is this okay?” Harold asked, needing to be sure that the signs he was seeing were arousal and not anxiety.

“It’s good.” John took a long deep breath and visibly settled himself. “It’s very good,” he said softly.

“You may touch me now, however you like,” Harold said, fighting to keep his voice even.

John’s hands came out from behind his back and hesitated for a moment before reaching up to touch Harold’s face. He traced Harold’s hairline from forehead to ears, his fingers bumping lightly over the earpieces of his glasses.

“Take them off,” Harold said, and John’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s more comfortable,” Harold said. Which was true, but the real reason was that he wanted, for the next little while at least, to be his true self with John. Wanted this first encounter to be as honest and as real as possible. And that meant discarding the last prop of his alter-ego. Not that John would know, of course, but it was important to Harold.

John slid the glasses off his face and put them out of the way. Then he lifted his hands to Harold’s face again and delicately, reverently, touched. John spent long minutes running this tips of his fingers over Harold’s brows and cheeks, lips and jaw. After a moment, Harold let his eyes slip closed.

“I’ve wanted to feel you touching me like this for a very long time, John,” Harold said when John’s hands finally slid down to his neck and shoulders. “But I didn’t even let myself dream that it would ever happen.”

“I’m glad it did,” John said, his voice low and rough as he slid his hands down Harold’s flanks to his hips, and then to his thighs, where they stilled. Harold opened his eyes and looked down. John’s hands lay broad and warm on his inner thighs, just an inch away from where his hard cock curved up towards his stomach, twitching.

“You don’t have to,” Harold said gently.

“I want to,” John said, looking up. His face was flushed. He stroked Harold’s inner thighs with his thumbs, and this time Harold didn’t bother to suppress the small noise. “Yeah,” John said on a soft breath. “I want to know I’m making you feel good.”

“You are, John.” Harold slid his hand into John’s hair, holding lightly. “You are making me feel very good.” That seemed to ground and relax him, and he looked back down at Harold’s cock, then slowly, tentatively, stroked it from tip to base with the pads of two fingers.

Harold gave a contented hum. “That feels very, very nice.”

“Good,” John said, not looking up, but doing it again. And again. Harold’s control was being severely tested, now, because he wanted so much more. He wanted John naked. He wanted John’s mouth. He wanted John bent over the bed, taking it and moaning with pleasure.

John’s thumb swept across the sensitive head of his hard cock and Harold moaned. John made a noise in reply, and did it again, a little quicker and rougher this time. Then his hand slid down to the base, and John leaned forward.

The instant Harold realized John’s intention, he tightened his hand in John’s hair, then quickly released it and cupped his jaw instead, urging him to look up.

“I don’t expect that of you, John.” Much as he would love to feel himself sinking into the hot wetness of John’s mouth, Harold wasn’t sure John was ready.

“I want to. I… I’ve thought about it. Often.”

“Only if you’re sure, and promise me that you’ll stop if you feel the least bit uncomfortable.”

“I swear, Harold,” John said, looking up at him with liquid heat in his eyes.

“All right then, but start slow and easy. It’s been rather a long time,” Harold said, blushing faintly. That got a small smile from John before he leaned down.

The first touch of John’s lips to the tip of his cock felt like an electric spark, and Harold had to fight to keep his composure. John kissed it several times before parting his lips and exploring the flare of the head with his tongue. Harold moaned, and he could feel John smiling against the sensitive skin of his cock.

Harold slid his hand back into John’s hair, and stared down at the incredible sight of John’s mouth on him. It would be so easy to let himself get lost in the sensations, to let John do whatever he liked, but Harold had planned this first scene carefully, and for good reason. John had the head of Harold’s cock in his mouth and was starting to inch down the shaft when Harold tightened his hand in John’s hair again. John stilled immediately, then quickly withdrew and looked up, concern and disappointment on his face.

“What’s wrong? Did I‑”

“Nothing’s wrong, love,” Harold smiled and stroked the side of John’s face. “Nothing at all. That felt absolutely wonderful, but there’s something else I’d like us to do. Are you hard?”

“Fuck yes,” John said, and Harold’s eyebrows went up. He’d never heard John swear before. “Sorry, I–“

“It’s quite all right. This is a question, and absolutely not an order. How do you feel about taking your pants off and lying on the bed with me?”

John shivered. “Yes, please.”

“Go ahead then.” Harold waited until John had moved back and stood up, then hiked himself to the middle of the bed and lay down on his bad side so that he’d have as much mobility as possible. He watched John take off his pants and socks, and there was no hesitation when he stripped off the tight black boxer-briefs, his erection springing free and bouncing against his stomach. Harold wanted to put his hands on it. He wanted to make John writhe and moan and beg. Not tonight. Tonight was for going slow and learning, for being gentle and comforting.

“Lie here facing me,” Harold said when John hovered at the edge of the bed. John did, leaving a few inches of space between them. “Closer.”

John moved to close the gap and gasped when two hard cocks bumped. Harold couldn’t help but smile. He put his free hand on the back of John’s neck and squeezed reassuringly, then hooked his good leg into John’s, bringing their groins together. John swallowed.

“Harold, please. I need–“

“Take us both in your hand and stroke slowly,” Harold said.

John closed his eyes and said, ‘fuck,’ on a whispered breath as he wrapped his hand around both hard cocks.

Harold couldn’t help the moan that John dragged out of him as he stroked them together once, slowly. “That’s good,” he said breathlessly. “Slow, just like that.”

John was obviously fighting for control. Fighting to follow Harold’s instructions and keep the pace on their cocks slow. He looked into Harold’s eyes with a mute, desperate plea.

“You’re doing very well, John. Very well. How do you feel?” Harold wanted to make sure that John was comfortable, that this wasn’t overwhelming him.

“If I felt any better, I’d be dead,” John said with a crooked smile. Harold smiled back and rubbed the base of John’s skull with his thumb. “Harold.” It sounded like John was moments away from starting to beg. Harold wanted to hear him beg. Hear him gasp and moan and swear and beg, but not tonight.

“Kiss me, John.” Harold expected John’s kiss to be ravenous and desperate, but instead it started as a gentle brush of lips, tentative and sweet. Then with firmer pressure, as if he was reassured that he was doing it right, he pressed soft kisses to Harold’s lips again and again, retreating each time. After a minute, Harold caught John’s lower lip between both of his, prolonging the contact. It drew a low moan and a shudder from John, whose hand faltered in its rhythm for a moment, then started up again, faster now.

Harold couldn’t fault him for it. His own self control was reaching its limits. It had been rather a long time since he’d last had sex after all, and he was all too ready to immerse himself in the raw sensuality of John’s body. He pressed closer, trusting that John could cope with the awkwardness of the angle, and touched his tongue to the seam of John’s lips, requesting entrance. John opened to him with another low moan, and the noise he made as Harold’s tongue slid over his almost made Harold come on the spot. He wanted this, first, though.

Harold thrust his hand back into John’s hair, cupping the back of his head. He let himself take, now, finally, kissing John with all the passion he’d kept under wraps since The Bellona Club’s address had come up on his computer screen. He was moaning into John’s mouth, but he didn’t care, John was making increasingly desperate noises in return.

When he knew he was nearly at the point of no return, Harold pulled back from the kiss and leaned his forehead against John’s. “Take what you need, John,” he said breathlessly, looking into John’s startlingly blue eyes. “Come for me.”

John’s strokes sped up to an almost frantic pace immediately, his eyes snapping shut and his body tensing against Harold’s. Harold felt the tremor of John’s cock against his, and he let go, crying out into John’s silence as he came, John’s hand now sliding wetly as both cocks pulsed until they were spent. For a long moment, Harold lay gasping at the force of his orgasm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d come that hard or that long… maybe he hadn’t.

As soon as his breathing was back under control, he pressed a soft kiss to John’s part open lips. “John, are you okay?”

“Terrific,” John said, opening his eyes and giving Harold a beautifully lazy smile. “You?”

“Wonderful.”

“I want to kiss you again, can I?”

“Please do.”

John’s kisses were as languid as his smile. Having a happy, sated, John Reese in his arms was just about the best thing he’d ever experienced, Harold thought. He wanted it again. Soon. Often.


	6. Chapter 6

_Four months later…_

Harold was sitting in the large, comfortable, leather-upholstered wing chair that he’d bought and had delivered to John’s apartment. Earlier that evening, John had served him an excellent chicken scallopini with lemons and olives, with chocolate panna cotta for dessert. After dinner, Harold retired to his chair with a cup of coffee, and before returning to the kitchen to clean up, John knelt to take off his shoes.

Harold slid one hand into John’s hair while he did, just because he could. Because John liked it. Because after going so long without this, they both needed it. They didn’t get evenings like this very often; the combination of not having a number, and John not being injured didn’t happen regularly, but they’d wrapped up an easy case this morning, and John had looked at him with heat in his eyes, and invited him over for dinner.

Now Harold sat, comfortably full of good food, basking in the glow of John’s attentive ministrations. Once both shoes were arranged by the edge of the bed, John looked up, waiting for permission to go back to the kitchen.

Harold cupped his cheek. “Thank you, love,” he said, smiling with pleasure at being able to say it aloud, and at John’s small, embarrassed smile in response.

“You’re welcome. I’ll just go clear the table,” John said, uncharacteristically talkative. John usually only answered Harold’s direct questions once they’d gotten to this part of the evening. Harold had an inkling as to why, though. They ‘debriefed’ carefully after each encounter, and after each of the last two sessions, John had asked for something in particular. He had, in fact, looked Harold straight in the eye and said, “I want you to fuck me, Harold.”

Over the last few months they had come to know each other’s bodies, each other’s likes and dislikes, each other’s limits. Harold had been cautious and careful at first, but now he knew just how far to push John with an order, and just how much he could ask of him sexually. John desperately wanted to give everything he could, so Harold, as was often the case, had to be the voice of reason.

But he couldn’t think of a good reason to deny John this. Deny it to both of them. Three weeks ago John had been held captive, and while he’d escaped, there were moments when Harold thought he might have to listen to John die. Those moments still haunted Harold. He shook his head to dispel his morbidity, and let his eyes track John’s movements in the kitchen, clearing the plates and cutlery off the table and stacking them in the dishwasher, putting pots to soak in the sink, turning off the coffee maker. Then he went through the apartment, turning off lights, checking the locks on the windows and the door, and arming the alarm systems.

Finally, he moved towards the bedroom end of the loft and stood in front of Harold’s chair. Harold nodded. John stripped. It wasn’t quite a striptease, but it wasn’t the fastest or more efficient disrobing, either. John unbuttoned his shirt cuffs, then pulled the tails out of his pants. He unbuttoned his shirt slowly and deliberately, and stripped it off with more flexing than was strictly necessary. He was more businesslike about his pants, socks, and underwear, however, and then turned and padded naked to the put them in the hamper. Harold watched John walk back across the room towards him. Watching John move, the play of his muscles, the confident precision with which he did everything, never ceased to give Harold a small thrill.

‘He has put himself in my hands. Trusted me with his body, and heart, and his very soul,’ Harold thought as John knelt gracefully before him. For a moment, Harold just looked, then he nodded. John undid his tie and placed it, along with his cuff-links, on the small table beside the chair. Harold now always made sure to wear cuff-links for their encounters; it reminded them both of when he’d been abducted by Root, and John had come for him. John unbuttoned Harold's shirt, tugged it gently out of his pants, and slid it off his shoulders. He laid it on the bed, and then clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head. Harold slid a hand into John’s hair, then leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

“Would you like to suck me?” Harold asked. He wasn’t ready to order John to do that yet; John was still a novice, although a very enthusiastic one.

“Yes please.” Harold could hear the unspoken ’sir’ at the end of John’s sentence. He still preferred it to remain unspoken.

“Go ahead, then.”

John unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his fly, and spread the fabric of his wool trousers wide. He took Harold gently in his big, warm hand, easing him out of the silk boxer shorts. Then John bent his head and kissed the head of Harold’s cock with dry lips before taking it into his mouth and sucking lightly. Harold let himself relax, again largely for John’s benefit. He slumped a little in his chair, let his hand card through the short strands of John’s hair, and made a contented humming sound.

“That feels wonderful, John,” he said, and John made a muffled sound before taking more of Harold in his mouth. It wouldn’t be long, Harold knew, before John was swallowing him to the root and begging Harold to fuck his face. Harold was looking forward to that. To John on his knees, looking debauched and wrecked, his mouth red and slick and lax as Harold slid in and out with slow, lazy thrusts of his hips. The image made his cock harden even further in John’s mouth. John’s lips tightened around him and Harold brought his other hand to cup John’s cheek, running his thumb along the edge of John’s lips.

John moaned, tried to take more and choked a little, then backed off, sucking and swallowing.

“Leave off for a minute,” Harold said, stroking John’s cheek and looking down at him with a fond smile to reassure him that his performance wasn’t lacking in any way. “Last time, when we discussed things afterwards, you said you wanted anal sex,” Harold said fighting to keep his voice matter-of-fact. “Is that something you still want?”

John swallowed and when he spoke his voice was rough, but clear. “Yes, Harold. I still want you to fuck me.” John had grown very direct, partly because he enjoyed trying to discomfit Harold, but also because he had learned that it was a surer way of getting what he wanted. Or at least opening the discussion.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Harold said, glancing down at John’s knees. “If you wanted, we could just go to bed together, as lovers.”

“Is that what you want?” John asked.

Harold shook his head slightly. “I just want to be sure that it’s good for you.”

“It will be good for me,” John said. John straightened his spine and clasped his hands behind his back. “This is good for me.” And certainly the curve of his hard cock was evidence that he was telling the truth.

“All right then. Please get the supplies and put them on the bed, then come back here.” John hesitated. “What is it, John?” Harold asked, stroking his hair reassuringly.

“I was just wondering if we needed,” John swallowed, “the condoms. It’s been over a year since I, ah, was with Zoe. And in the shower earlier, I–“

“You’d prefer we didn’t use condoms?” The idea hadn’t occurred to Harold, primarily because he’d never had sex without one. Not that he’d had very many partners, but it was stupid not to take the most basic of precautions. Thinking about it now though, he knew that both himself and John were perfectly healthy in that regard, so why not?

“I want to feel you,” John said simply, but the tips of his ears pinked.

“All right then, just get the lubricant, and bring it here.” Harold discarded his earlier plan in favor of an image that occurred to him when John mentioned cleaning himself in the shower. Driving John to the very edge, making him squirm and ordering him to be still, was one of Harold’s favorite parts of their encounters, and he’d just thought of a new way to do that.

John fetched the bottle and put it into Harold’s hand. “Thank you. Now turn around, spread your legs, and then bend over and put your palms flat on the floor, please.”

John’s eyebrows went up, but he did as he was asked without comment, folding himself in half and presenting his ass. Harold moved forward on his chair and put his hands on the muscular globes of John’s ass. “Feet about an inch farther apart, I think.” John grunted softly as he adjusted. “That’s better. Now hold that position until I say otherwise.”

Harold spread John’s cheeks wide, using firm pressure from his fingers and the heels of his hands, leaving his thumbs free. He laid the pad of one thumb directly on John’s hole lightly, just resting it there for a moment. The muscles contracted at his touch, then relaxed again. He heard John blow his breath out. Harold began to stroke the warm skin with his thumb slowly in a gentle, loving caress. At the third stroke John whimpered.

“I’ve got you,” Harold said. “You’re okay.” He trusted John, now, to tell him if something was wrong, so he relished drawing desperate sounds out of him, and then giving him the reassurance of safety that John craved. Harold switched to firm pressure, not trying to delve inside, just giving John another sensation.

“Please,” John gasped, his voice muffled by his position.

“I’ve got you,” Harold said again, now taking a firmer grip, laying his thumbs on either side of John’s pucker, and drawing him open. He leaned in, smelling the clean scent of John’s plain soap, and tasted.

John gasped and shook and cried out, “Harold.”

Harold drew back. “Are you all right, John?” He tried to keep the amusement out of his voice and failed utterly.

“I’m… Harold…” For once John was at a loss for words.

“Did you find that unpleasant, or would you like me to continue?”

“It’s… not unpleasant,” John said with a choked sound. Harold waited. When John didn’t say anything else, he leaned in again and applied his tongue in a wide lick.

John moaned. “Fuck, Harold.” John only swore when he was in danger of losing control. Harold smiled, and then went to work, licking across John’s hole a few more times before starting to work his tongue inside. John’s thighs trembled and he whined again. Harold exerted more pressure with his thumbs, drawing John open even wider so that his tongue could go deeper.

“Fuck, Harold. I can’t. I need. Please. Harold, please.”

Harold wasn’t sure what John was begging for, whether it was to be released from the position, permission to come, or further penetration. It may well be a combination of all three. Harold continued for a few moments more, until John’s breath was coming in great gasps and his whole body was shaking, then he backed off. He slid his hands to John’s waist and kissed one muscled cheek, then the other.

“You taste incredible,” Harold said, and John moaned again at that. “Straighten up. Slowly; give yourself a moment to recover.” Before John could bring his legs together, Harold reached between them with one hand and grasped his testicles firmly.

“Harold.” It was an undignified squawk that turned into a whine as Harold rolled John’s balls in the palm of his hand and applied light pressure to his perineum.

“Shh. Relax, John.” John made a ‘humph’ sound that Harold assumed meant ‘How am I supposed to relax when you’re fondling my balls?’ but he didn’t speak. “Good. That’s good. Now, get on the bed on your hands and knees.” Harold squeezed lightly then released his hold. John took a deep breath and climbed onto the bed. He didn’t watch as Harold got out of his chair, removed his remaining clothes, and climbed onto the bed behind him.

Harold spent a few moments stroking John’s back, ass, and thighs, ostensibly to reassure him, but once Harold had learned how much John enjoyed being teased and pushed, how much orgasm delay (not denial, never denial) at his command made John whimper and shake and beg so beautifully, it had become a major component of their sessions together. Just as he noted John getting impatient, he took his hands off John’s body and picked up the bottle of lubricant. He squeezed a substantial dollop onto his fingers and then capped the bottle and dropped it close to hand. Using his still-clean hand to spread John’s ass cheeks, he slathered the substance into John’s crack, then probed lightly with a single finger. John pushed back against it, taking it to the first knuckle.

“Hold still. You are not to take anything that I don’t give you, is that understood?” Harold said sharply. He knew John was impatient, but Harold didn’t want him hurting himself.

“Sorry, Harold. I want it. Please.”

“Only if you promise to be still and let me do this properly,” Harold said, easing his finger back out and then pressing gently in again.

“Yes. Promise.”

“All right then,” Harold said, using his clean hand to stroke up John’s spine to the back of his neck. “I’ve got you.” He pressed in further, meeting no resistance at all. “You’re looser than I expected,” he said conversationally, pumping his finger out and back in again.

“I, ah, practiced.”

“I see. How exactly did you do that?” Harold was careful to merely sound curious. The idea of John stretching himself in preparation for taking his cock was surprisingly exciting.

“I bought a,” John cleared his throat and Harold withdrew his finger, then pressed two fingers gently in, just a little. John groaned. “Yes, Harold, please. Yes.”

“What did you buy?” Harold asked, glad that John couldn’t see the twitching of his cock or the flush on his face.

“A plug.”

“And when did you use it?” Harold was pressing two fingers in slowly, but John was loose enough to take them easily.

“Every few days, when I wasn’t, ah, otherwise engaged.”

“Every few days for the last three weeks?” Harold was surprised, but the ease with which he was pumping two fingers in and out of John’s ass seemed to corroborate his words.

“And today. This afternoon. Before, fuck, Harold, oh fuck. Please. Please.” John’s voice rose to a whine as Harold pushed in with three of his long, slim fingers.

“What did you do this afternoon, John?” Harold was intrigued. He’d been half-convinced that John wanted this mostly for his benefit, out of some conviction that Harold wanted or expected it of him, rather than from a strong desire to be fucked. John’s moans and cries now, though, seemed to indicate that he enjoyed the sensation of being penetrated in its own right.

“I fucked myself with it, wishing it was your cock,” John said in a frustrated growl.

“Did you, now?” Harold was breathing in shallow pants to the image of John moaning and writhing on a plug. Maybe next time they had a free day he would come over in the early afternoon, and use the toy on John himself. He would find some small task for John to do, and watch him move around the apartment naked and plugged, ready and waiting for him. For his cock which was throbbing and leaking in anticipation. Harold hoped John wasn’t going to be disappointed. He wasn’t as young as he once was, and his bad leg made any kind of athleticism impossible. But since John did enjoy following his orders…

“Well then I suppose there’s no need to keep you waiting any longer. Shoulders down on the bed, please. Stretch your arms up and grip the edge of the mattress. Turn your head to whichever side is more comfortable for you.” Harold issued the instructions crisply and John started moving immediately to comply. “Good. Now you are not to move at all unless I tell you to. And you are not to come until I give you permission, is that clear?”

“Yes.” John’s voice was hoarse.

Wanting to test John’s resolve, Harold twisted the three fingers that were still probing John’s ass and pressed lightly on the smooth bump of his prostate. John’s hands clenched into fists and his eyes squeezed shut. A high-pitched whine escaped his throat. But he didn’t move. “Good. Very good, John. You are doing very well.” Harold stroked John’s back while he slid his fingers out. He’d been generous with the lubricant earlier, so used them to slick his own cock. “Knees just a little farther apart, please,” he said, gauging the heights and angles. John moved, then settled.

Harold was struck with a sense of awe at the gift John Reese was giving him. This submission went beyond trust and love to something more, something deeper. “So beautiful,” Harold murmured, running his clean hand up John’s back again. “So good for me.” John made a small noise. “Shh. It’s okay,” Harold said, positioning his hard, slick cock at John’s pucker. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” He pushed slowly and gently, but he needn’t have worried. John opened up for him with a moan.

It was hot and tight and slick and perfect. Harold gripped John’s hips tightly, trying desperately to maintain control when all he wanted was to thrust, to piston his hips and to sheath himself again and again in John’s welcoming body. “I’ve got you,” Harold whispered as he bottomed out, his hips snug against John’s ass.

“Oh god. Harold.” It didn’t sound like distress, but Harold had to make sure.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

“So good. Oh, god, Harold it’s so good. I never dreamed… Want this. Want you. So good.” John was babbling, which was somewhat disconcerting, but  it was obviously pleasure and not discomfort.

“Good,” Harold said, loosening one hand from John’s hip and stroking his back again, as much to distract himself as to comfort John. “Good, now just relax for me, John,” he said as he dragged his cock back out, all but the head, the tight friction making him gasp. “Relax and breathe and take,” he said as he pushed back in.

Johan moaned again, loudly. “So good,” he mumbled. “So good.”

Harold had to agree. Admittedly it had been a rather long time since he’d had sex like this, but he didn’t remember it being quite this… devastating. He was barely hanging on to his higher reasoning; the animal instincts of “thrust” and “take” and “fuck” threatened to overwhelm him completely. He focused on his own breathing, setting up a slow rhythm that he hoped he could sustain for a little while, at least. Two long slow breaths as he pulled out, two more long slow breaths as he pushed back in. John moaned with each thrust, a deep low rumbling in his chest that made Harold thrill to hear. The noises that he was drawing out of John were incredible; and the sight of him lying there, stretched out, offering up his ass, eyes closed, face slack in bliss. Harold felt his chest tighten.

“Oh, my love,” he murmured, unable to keep the feeling from bubbling out as words. “My dearest love.”

John whined and tightened around him, his hips jerking forward a little before stilling again. Was John that close to coming already? Harold slid his hand up John’s spine and grasped the back of his neck, knowing that John’s sturdy build and thick muscles meant he couldn’t to any real damage no matter how tightly he squeezed. His grip seemed to reassure John, who relaxed again under him, but then mumbled, “Harold, please. I need. Please.” The last word was almost a sob.

“You’re okay. I’ve got you.” Harold said as he re-balanced himself in the new position, now supporting some of his weight on John’s body, pushing him down into the bed. He wondered if he should check in again, despite the fact that John could easily throw him off in an instant, but John moaned again under him, so Harold deduced that the nominal restraint wasn’t unwelcome. And now… now he was going to fuck John as hard as he possibly could.

Gripping tightly with both hands, one stretched out along John’s back and the other grasping his hip, Harold drew out and then snapped his hips back in, finally giving way to the urge that had been clawing at him since he first sank into John’s body.

“Yes, Harold. Fuck me. Take me. Please.”

Harold didn’t have the breath to speak and fuck John at the same time, so he just kept going as hard and as fast as he could manage, letting the fire build in his belly as his balls tightened and his cock throbbed. It was wonderful and perfect and Harold found himself crying out with the overwhelming pleasure of each sharp thrust. He was very nearly at the point of no return, and under him John was moaning and shuddering, his body shaking with need, his thighs quivering against Harold’s with every thrust. Harold loosed his hold on John’s hip and reached under to grasp his cock. It was so big and thick that Harold had difficulty wrapping his fingers around it, but at his touch John cried out, “Please.”

“Yes,” Harold said on a sharp exhale. “Come for me, John. Now.” And Harold snapped his hips again, driving in as deep and as hard as he could while John’s cock leapt and pulsed in his hand, and John’s ass tightened around him. Harold’s own orgasm hit hard, making him shout and curl forward over John’s back with the force of it. John’s ass was still contracting, milking him, and John’s cock pulsed again in his hand. Harold shook, gasping for breath, trying not to collapse onto John’s back, but failing. His warm skin, damp with sweat, felt like a balm to Harold, grounding him and pulling him back into an awareness of his physical surroundings. His limbs were still weak and uncoordinated, however, so he resorted to kissing John between his shoulder blades over and over.

“So good for me, John. So very good. I love you, my dearest. Love you so much,” he murmured.

“Love you too,” John mumbled from underneath him.

“How do you feel?” Harold asked, kissing his back again.

“Safe,” John said. “And free.”

“Oh, John.” There were tears in Harold’s eyes and a lump in his throat. He drew in a long, steadying breath. John would need him, he couldn’t afford to break down. Harold felt his cock softening and slipping wetly out of John’s ass, and took that as his cue to move, but he had barely budged before John tensed and said, “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, dearest. I just thought I might be getting heavy,” he said, stretching his head up to kiss John’s shoulder and nuzzle his neck reassuringly.

“You’re not too heavy,” John said, and then after a pause. “I could hold you forever.”

“You probably could,” Harold smiled and kissed him again. “But my leg is going to cramp up, which won’t be pleasant for either of us. So why don’t we just shift enough to lie down and hold each other.”

“‘kay.” John opened his eyes and craned his neck to see over his shoulder. “How do you want me?”

“Let me just…” Harold moved to his right, sliding off John’s back and collapsing on the mattress next to him, but keeping his hand on the back of John’s neck all the while. “There. Now I think I’d like to rest my head on your shoulder, so if you’ll just shift onto your back.”

John was moving before Harold had finished speaking, turning over and stretching out, snagging the coverlet from where it was folded at the foot of the bed, and drawing it up over both of them as Harold snuggled into his side.

“There, how’s that?” Harold asked, tucking his face into the crook of John’s neck and curling one arm possessively around his chest.

“Perfect. Thank you Harold. That was incredible.”

“Yes, for me too.”

“I’m glad.” John kissed the top of Harold’s head. “I want you to have anything you want. I know we’ve been going slowly for my sake, but Harold,” Harold shifted and looked up into John’s earnest face. “There’s nothing I won’t do for you. There’s nothing I won’t enjoy doing for you, just because you want it. So please–“ Harold stretched up and kissed him quiet.

“I will take that under advisement. There are many things I want to do with you, John, many ways in which we can make each other happy. There’s no rush for any of it.”

“There might be,” John said, his eyes clouding.

“We can’t predict the future. Well, not by much, anyway. So in the meantime let’s plan to make the most of whatever time we have together, my love.”

John relaxed at that, wrapping his arms around Harold and holding him close, then kissing the top of his head again softly. “It’s so much more than I thought I’d have, Harold. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You can thank me by taking as few risks with your person as possible.” Harold didn’t voice the terror he felt every time he heard gunshots over the phone, but he thought John probably already knew.

“I’ll try,” John said, “But you did warn me when you hired me that we’d both probably end up dead.”

“Sometimes I wish…” Harold let the thought trail off.

“That we could forget the machine, the numbers, all of it, and run off to somewhere safe and quiet and be happy?”

“Yes.”

“We could,” John said, but Harold knew he didn’t actually believe it.

“It’s nice to think so, but we couldn’t.”

“No we couldn’t.” John pulled Harold a little closer, held him a little tighter, and tucked his nose into Harold’s hair. “Whatever happens, it was worth it. For this,” he whispered.

“For us,” Harold answered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to infiniteeight for beta reading!!!
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at: [Jo Mathieson](http://jmathieson-fic.tumblr.com/page/4) and on Imzy at: [Purple Passion](https://www.imzy.com/purplepassion)


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